The Usability Team of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program works to identify issues faced by first responders surrounding the use of their existing and emerging public safety communication technology. The Usability Team conducted a series of in-depth interviews with approximately 200 first responders about their views on communication technology. The results of these interviews informed a nationwide, large-scale survey completed by over 7,000 first responders. This tool provides public access to over 20,000 first responder quotes from the first responder interview data, as well as the 7,182 survey responses. This tool also provides a means to analyze the survey results, creating charts and tables dynamically based on filter selections.
The survey results, accessed via the Survey Results Tool and the Survey Analyzer Tool, and the interview quotes, available via the Interview Quotes Tool, can be freely used to influence the research, design and development of communication technology in the public safety domain. Any interview quotes or survey results used in published materials should properly attribute this tool as well as the appropriate NISTIR reports in the series of volumes published as detailed in the Interview Quotes Tool FAQ as well as the Survey Results Tool FAQ and the Survey Analyzer Tool FAQ. Information about the research methodology and instrument design for both the interview and survey protocols, as well as instructions on how to interpret the results, can also be found in these FAQs.