Description:

To paraphrase the philosopher Comte, science consists in the coordination of facts; if observations were entirely isolated, there could be no science.  Since publication of the 2018 National Academies Press report on integrating the social and behavioral sciences (SBS) into the weather enterprise, there has been a sizable increase in social science research into how forecasters, partners, and the public access, interpret, and use weather and climate information when making decisions. Associated with this increase is a growing need to coordinate on topics such as overlapping research efforts in the field, access to sampling mechanisms or research equipment, reducing survey fatigue and more.  While there are tremendous strengths to having a diversity of researchers, perspectives and efforts, as the field continues to grow it is important to put in place an infrastructure that supports communication and collaboration among researchers and intermediaries. WPO’s Social Science Program is interested in initiating and advancing a conversation about mechanisms, policy, or institutions that might support the priority setting and coordination of research efforts needed to support continued successful growth. 

This session seeks abstracts for high energy, 5-minute lightning talk presentations, followed by a speaker panel, that highlight a challenge, barrier, or proposed solution to the exciting growing pains facing the coordination of SBS field research and data collection. These creative presentations will then allow the speakers to host a panel discussion, spark an open dialogue, and ignite a passionate and interactive discussion with the SBS weather community. Presenters in this session are encouraged to consider the following topics (among others) when crafting their abstracts and presentation materials: 

• Challenges and potential mechanisms for coordinating conflicting and/or overlapping field research to avoid oversampling and respondent fatigue. 

• Mechanisms to coordinate and/or share sampling designs or sampling frames for highly sought expert audiences in the weather, water, and climate enterprise (e.g., forecasters, emergency managers, etc.)  

• Ethics of data collection and field research, including training on human subjects research, maintaining anonymity of expert groups, and sharing SBS data while ensuring vulnerable groups feel protected.

• Opportunities to increase the accessibility of SBS tools, technologies, equipment and other resources that may benefit data collection in the field.