ESW Supporting Statement

OMB Control No. 0693-0033 – NIST Clearance for Program Evaluation Data Collections

Electroshock Weapon (ESW) Standards Collaborative Interest Survey

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

The survey will be sent to the approximately fifty individuals who registered for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Electroshock Weapon (ESW) Test and Measurement Workshop held on 21 Jan 2011 at NIST, Gaithersburg, MD. The workshop participants included most of the experts in this field and also the manufacturers of the electroshock weapons. They are the most appropriate subjects to survey.

The ESW Workshop was conducted to discuss the need for standardized methods of testing the proper operation and performance of ESWs. Although this need had been presented to the Law Enforcement Standards Office (OLES) of NIST on separate occasions, there was no apparent concurrence across the ESW stakeholders (law enforcement and corrections, military, standards and test & evaluation community, medical research, policy makers, and ESW manufacturers) community for this need.  The workshop was announced in the Federal Register.

The focus of the ESW Workshop was to determine the need for standards for ESW use. There was consensus that standards are necessary but there was much confusion on the development of those standards. The purpose of the survey is to quantify the interest of the workshop attendees in the development of these standards, including contributing to this development.

2. Explain how the survey was developed including consultation with interested parties, pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

The purpose of the Electroshock Weapon Test and Measurement Workshop was to gauge the interest and areas of concern in the field of electroshock weapon testing and measurements.

The survey questions were developed to further determine interest and focus areas based on the interest stated by the workshop participants.

The survey was developed by OLES staff based on inputs and discussion during the ESW workshop. OLES is a unique office within NIST with a mission to help criminal justice, public safety, emergency responder, and homeland security agencies make informed procurement, deployment, applications, operating, and training decisions, primarily by developing performance standards, measurement tools, operating procedures and equipment guidelines.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to take to improve the response rate.

The survey will be emailed to all people who registered for the workshop, regardless if they attended or not (52 people registered, 45 attended). We expect that 95% or greater will respond to the survey, judging from the interest and participation at the workshop. We will improve the response rate by sending two follow-up email reminders requesting completion and return of the survey.

4. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results to the entire customer population.

The survey responses will be collected and a simple majority will be used to determine further interest and future actions. The workshop participants included most of the experts in this field and electroshock weapon manufacturers, generalization to the entire customer population will not be necessary.

Future actions may include assisting in the establishment of committees and/or working groups within standards development organizations to address standardization needs, establishing a ‘collaboration’ web site to promote communication among the stakeholders, and hosting additional workshops.

The responses to the questions will be counted and tabulated, without attribution, to quantify the interest of the workshop participants in the topics discussed by the participants. This tabulated count will be presented to the participants for their information and used by OLES to develop an appropriate strategy to address stakeholder requirements.