Designing and conducting research on extreme events involves many moving parts. That's why the CONVERGE facility, located at the Natural Hazards Center, created the Extreme Events Research Check Sheets Series. The growing collection of short, user-friendly sheets can help researchers stay organized and incorporate best practices at every stage of their study, from design to the completion of fieldwork.
"The check sheets are designed for students and other emerging researchers who are new to the field, as well as for teachers and mentors who are supporting extreme events research projects," said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center and principal investigator of CONVERGE. "We think this series will be especially helpful in the context of interdisciplinary research, since these sheets can serve as a quick primer on several core principles for social science quick response research."
The series was made possible with support from the National Science Foundation's Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR). "Our hope is that these series will help advance quick response research and ensure its methodological rigor," said Paul Kovacs, executive director of ICLR.
To date, the CONVERGE team and collaborators from universities across the United States and Canada, have published more than 30 check sheets on a number of topics ranging from methodological approaches and ethical considerations to data analysis and dissemination. Each check sheet is available for download as a PDF.
To further support sound research practices, all check sheets include a suggested citation and a permanent DOI through publication in the DesignSafe Data Depot. "Assigning a permanent DOI to the check sheets not only makes them easier to cite in research proposals and papers, it can also help with discoverability," said Ellen Rathje, principal investigator of DesignSafe.
The Extreme Events Research Check Sheets Series is published on an ongoing basis and new contributions to the series are always welcome. Those interested in being involved can reach the CONVERGE team at converge@colorado.edu.
This CONVERGE Extreme Events Check Sheets series is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NSF Award #1841338) with supplemental funding from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or ICLR.
