How does the public respond to forecasts issued by the National Weather Service (NWS)? What actions do people take during severe weather? Do people understand their level of risk when it comes to threatening weather? How can the NWS better communicate with the public during significant weather events? Answers to all of these questions would provide the NWS with very valuable information that would help improve products and services. Due to limitations put on all federal agencies by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, collecting this type of information from the public is not a trivial task. Organized collection of this type of feedback must be coordinated and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In late 2010, the NWS formed a team and tasked them with developing sets of OMB-approved questions that can be used to solicit public feedback within hours or days after a hazardous weather event occurs. This NWS Survey Team consists of meteorologists, hydrologists, and social scientists with varying educational and professional backgrounds (e.g., fire weather, severe weather, marine weather, surveying methods, data analysis, etc.) developing sets of questions that may be used by any NWS entity to gather relevant feedback after an event. It is the goal of the team to have these survey questions available for use beginning in the latter part of the 2011-12 winter season.

This presentation will discuss why surveys are vital to the NWS's mission of protecting life and property, what the team has accomplished to date, methods in which the surveys are conducted, how feedback is collected and analyzed, and surveying methods the team will be exploring in the future.