From the Executive Director
Robert B. Waide, LTER Network Office
The LTER Network Office (LNO) has recently begun to employ written and electronic surveys to seek feedback from the LTER community on a variety of network activities. The results of these surveys will be used to prioritize efforts at the LNO and to determine community preferences for specific Network activities. Three surveys have been employed so far. We aimed the first of these at individual LTER scientists and distributed it to over 700 people at the 2003 All Scientists Meeting (Seattle, WA). We also sent the survey electronically to the complete LTER mailing list. This survey was designed to determine preferences of individual LTER and ILTER scientists, students, and educators. The second survey, which was distributed to sites in November 2003, had two functions. Sites were asked to provide collective expressions of priorities to guide the allocation of effort to LNO task areas. In addition, the survey attempted to gauge satisfaction with the direction and results of LNO activities. We developed a third, Web-based survey to determine satisfaction with the recent All Scientists Meeting and to determine preferences for future meetings.
Innovative Technology Partnerships (ITP), a consulting firm contracted by the University of New Mexico to assist with the LNO Strategic Plan, helped design the first survey (“Individual Survey”). We received 209 responses to this survey out of 711 surveys distributed at the ASM. This level of response (29%) represents a marginally acceptable return rate, as most surveys hope to realize a 33% return. The 209 responses were distributed among the following demographic categories:
- LTER Scientists (85)
- Graduate Students (57)
- Educational Representatives (21)
- Others (19)
- LTER Lead PI (15)
- Information Managers (7)
- International Scientists (5)
The Individual Survey was organized to reflect the nine task areas of the LNO, and questions were designed to elicit community needs, LNO strengths, and areas for future development. ITP prepared an analysis of the results of this survey, which is available in the document archive on the LTER intranet page (http://intranet.lternet.edu) along with a copy of the survey instrument and qualitative responses to the survey. The survey did not uncover any critical issues that needed immediate response, but did identify a number of community needs and areas for future development. They included:
- Continuation of triennial All Scientists Meetings.
- Leadership role from LTER Network Office to develop tools and activities that facilitate synthesis across sites.
- Logistical support for synthesis workshops.
- Centralized Web entry point for access to information about site and LTER activities.
- Tools available to allow access to data at all LTER sites through a single interface.
- Organization and support of workshops to facilitate the development or use of standard protocols.
- Leadership and technical support to insure that informatics standards, approved and endorsed by the Coordinating Committee, are adopted by individual LTER sites.
- Seek funding to provide a staff person at least half-time to work with site information managers on technology transfer.
- Expansion of educational efforts to provide information on funding activities in education.
- Expansion of educational efforts to facilitate communication among site education coordinators.
- Expansion of outreach efforts in publications and educational television.
- Expansion of outreach efforts in mass media.
Analysis of the results of the Individual Survey continue, and conclusions will be made available to the LTER community as they are reached. We plan to administer updated versions of this survey every three years. The LNO has begun to implement policy changes to address issues raised by respondents to the survey.
The second survey, administered to sites (“Site Survey”), was similar to the Individual Survey in that it was also organized along LNO task areas.
However, because the LTER bylaws call for this survey to be used in an annual evaluation of the LNO, the Site Survey emphasized assessment more than the Individual Survey (see link to “Bylaws” on the LTER Web site— http://www.lternet.edu). Twenty-two of 24 LTER sites responded to the Site Survey, and most sites provided useful additional comments on needs and priorities. Generally speaking, sites were satisfied with the basic services provided by LNO, but two areas stood out as requiring further effort. Support of synthesis and information management and methods development were both identified as topics that could benefit from increased attention from LNO. Suggestions for ways in which the LNO can address these issues include increases in support for synthesis working groups, pursuit of new funds for cross-site and network synthesis, support of the Network Strategic Planning activities, support of the activities of the Network Information System Advisory Committee, and development of mechanisms to provide additional technical support in informatics directly to sites. The Coordinating Committee will provide recommendations to NSF for changes in the LNO Cooperative Agreement to address site and Network needs.
Comments submitted by sites as part of the survey provided valuable ideas for modifications to LNO activities. A few representative comments are available in the full-text version of this article, on the LTER Newsletter Web site: http://www.lternet.edu/newsletter.