Subject: RE: What kind and what amount of information do people need ? -- EPA has done survey work on these questions, but won't release it.
I concur with what several folks have said re this question. What sorts of information people need, and how much they need, will vary from person to person and probably are almost infinitely varied. Certainly there is no level of detail that will not be too shallow for some and too deep for others. Thus, as I think Velma Smith said, the key is to make it accessible through as many routes as possible, and to chunk it at various levels, so that people can get answers to the specific questions they want. There's also the question of how 'raw' or 'interpreted' the data need to be, to which the answer seems to be both -- most people don't want raw data, but most want to be ABLE to get it, to validate the interpretation they're given.
That being said, these are both empirical questions, and can be assessed through research. (And such research is more likely to get at what most Americans want than any of our impressions from our personal experiences or biases.) About a year ago, EPA hired a consultant to conduct a massive phone survey to see what sorts of environmental information people wanted. The work is done, but EPA is unwilling to release it. It may be that the study was not done well, isn't statistically sound, etc. But it would be interested to see in any case. Well, EPA?
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