National vs Regional vs Institutional conference I'm a PhD student currently writing a scholarship application, and there is a section in which I can include any non-refereed contributions, which includes conference presentations.  For such presentations, I am to indicate whether the conference is, in their words, "institutional, regional, provincial, national or international."

Some of the conferences I've presented at are very obviously international and national.  However, I'm having some difficulty classifying some of the smaller, graduate conferences I've spoken at.  

I suppose my question is: what is an institutional conference?  At what point is a conference considered regional?  Provincial?  

It seems a bit silly to just go from the title of the conference.  For example, if conference X has the name of a city in the title, it would be regional, but conference Y has the name of a province in it and is therefore provincial, even though conference X had greater attendance and was considered to be higher profile because of an established history.  As such, this is probably the wrong way to go about it.  What is the right way?
I don't know that there are any hard and fast rules for this - I see it as referring to the organization that hosts the conference. Is it a international or national organization or a regional/provincial/local branch of an international or national organization.

Institutional conference = hosted by an institution and attended mostly by people from one institution.

Regional = generally a regional division of a national organization. For example, the American Psychological Association has different regions, which hold their own conferences. See http://www.apa.org/about/apa/organizations/regionals.aspx

Provincial = similar to regional, but when the national organization is subdivided into provinces.

National conference = hosted by a national professional organization.

International = hosted by an international professional organization.

The name of the conference doesn't necessarily indicate if it is a national, regional, provincial, local, or institutional conference. For example, a national conference might be held at the same location every year, and thus might have the name of that location in its title, but it is still a national conference.

Good luck with your scholarship!