The survey features an embedded experimental design. All respondents see the belief, sense of belonging, public support, and agency membership questions. For the scientific evidence statements and action prescription soundness statements, respondents are randomly assigned into one of four conditions: (1) Long-term, negative information, (2) Long-term, positive information, (3) Short-term, negative information, (4) Short-term, positive information.
Further, respondents only see one randomly selected soundness argument, randomly selected from the three evidence statements.
The research team had emails lists for all employees working for the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Department of Forestry, and Washington Department of Natural Resources. The research team removed contacts that were not considered “managers” defined as “people who are engaged in planning and implementing management actions on a landscape”. Examples of positions excluded include Human Resources, Information Technology, front office staff, field technicians, and research staff. All remaining contacts (n = 2,273) were invited to participate in the survey. 568 people clicked on the survey (response rate 25%), 461 identified as managers (20% adjusted response rate). After removing respondents who did not answer any questions beyond the filter (e.g., they clicked through the survey but did not answer any questions), the final sample size is 410.
For the Forest Service, the survey was distributed by a member of the Forest Service to internal listservs. The exact number of people on the listservs, and how many of them were managers is unknown. It is estimated there were approximately 450 people in the Forest Service listserv. 38 clicked on the survey and 33 identified as managers.
Only respondents who identified as managers are included in the dataset. Given the response rate for Department of the Interior and State Agencies, and the non-representative sampling of Forest Service employees, when it comes to descriptive statistics, the database should be interpreted cautiously as a representative sample of PNW public land managers.
We conducted a web-based survey using the Qualtrics survey platform The survey included descriptive measures and a 2x2 experimental design. We measured respondents’ beliefs about salvage logging, thinning, and translocation. Belief questions were measured on a 5-point bi-polar scale (-2 to 2) from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree.
Next, each respondent was randomly assigned to a condition whereby they received and evaluated results from either a long-term or short-term study. To reduce cognitive load, timeframe varied across respondents but not across management issues within respondents. For each issue, respondents were randomly assigned to either receive positive or negative evidence about the management practice. In the positive condition, the evidence statements suggested the management practice was useful or effective at various goals. In the negative condition, the practice was either ineffective or harmful. For each management issue, respondents rated the usefulness of 3 hypothetical study results for their job. In order to reduce cognitive load, respondents saw only one argument for each management issue, randomly selected from the 3 evidence statements. Respondents rated the soundness of the argument prescribing a management action based on the hypothetical survey results and were asked to explain their answer in an open-ended response. Respondents then answered 5-point bipolar scales about their sense of belonging in the workplace and the extent to which the public supports their unit’s actions. Respondents answered with agency they work for.
