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Task 2: Survey Colorado Municipal Water Providers This is the core empirical research task of this project. The purpose of this task is to develop and implement a telephone survey instrument to obtain new information on the current status of drought planning and preparedness and drought water supply from municipal providers in Colorado, focusing on key question areas identified in the Project Goals. Task 2.1: Develop and Test Survey Instrument NRC and Aquacraft will work with the SECWCD and the CWCB to develop an interview script to answer the research questions identified for this project. The interview script from the 2003 project will serve as a starting point, with several sections or questions that can be used "as is" to gather the necessary data, and to allow comparisons to previous results. New question sets will be created. The script development process is an iterative one, with review and suggestions from both sides. We will work to ensure that the final questions are clear and unbiased, to generate the most useful information. NRC will pilot test the interview with a small sample (between 3 and 10) of respondents. Generally, if the questionnaire design work has been done well, only a few changes grow out of the pretesting, although some changes can be critical. When all pretest interviews are complete, modifications to the survey are made and then confirmed with the client. Pretesting helps considerably to ensure that the survey instrument is clear and unbiased; and it allows for editing ambiguous or stilted questions. Pretesting also allows the opportunity to create effective responses to unanticipated respondent answers or questions. Task 2.2: Implement Survey The survey will be implemented using a list of municipal water providers and agencies developed for the 2003 study and/or other recent CWCB research efforts. It is estimated that 500 providers will constitute the survey list. The goal (which may be exceeded or may not be reached) is to have 250 completed survey responses for analysis. A pre - survey information letter will be sent to the survey list group. This letter will provide detailed information about the survey and is intended to assist in reducing problems associated with cold calling. NRC will contract with a local call center for the telephone recruitment and interviewing of respondents. The interview script will be programmed into a CATI (computer -aided telephone interviewing) system that both manages the sample (the list of phone numbers to be called) as well as the actual interview script. Programming the script means that each question is displayed on the interviewer's screen. The respondents' answer is entered into the computer. "Range checks" and other validation tools are used to ensure accuracy of the responses. "Skip patterns" are also programmed into the system; for example, if a respondent should be asked one question if they answer a previous question "no" but a different question if they answered "yes," the appropriate question is automatically displayed to the interviewer.