WWS24

This report describes the results of a nationwide survey of Spanish speakers on winter weather in the United States. The 2024 Winter Weather Spanish Survey (WWS24) was designed and administered by the Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (IPPRA) at the University of Oklahoma. It is the second time the survey has been translated into Spanish (see Bitterman et al. 2024 for more information on the 2023 Winter Weather Spanish Survey (WWS23)). It was fielded from December 11, 2024 - January 6, 2025, using an online questionnaire that was completed by 447 U.S. adults (age 18+) who self-reported that they speak Spanish at least “well” and were recruited from an Internet panel that matches the characteristics of the U.S. Spanish speaking population as estimated in the U.S. Census. The WWS23 survey was designed to establish baseline measures of the extent to which U.S. Spanish-speaking adults receive, understand, and respond to winter weather forecasts and warnings. The survey also measured public trust in the National Weather Service (NWS), extreme weather perceptions, risk literacy, interpretations of probabilistic language, and winter weather preparedness. In the WWS24 survey, those baseline questions were refined, and experiments were added investigating the impact on understanding and response when colors on weather forecast graphics go against what is expected, when health information is added to messaging, and when forecasters include their level of confidence in a forecast. This report briefly describes the methodology, survey data collection, data weighting, and a reproduction of the survey instrument with weighted means and frequencies for the questions that elicited numeric responses.

NOAA’s Weather Program Office provided funding for survey design and data analysis.