Survey protocols

What are survey protocols?

Survey protocols are a dedicated space on your Nature Counts website where you can store all the information relating to how a survey is carried out. This is useful for contextualising the data - how was it recorded is useful to know when looking at survey data.

Nature Counts survey protocols is just a tool for writing and accessing your survey protocols and are not prescriptive, if you do not want to use one of the subheadings given, or want to use them differently to how Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust have used them then that is fine.

Viewing a protocol

If you have the survey admin role you will see these tabs at the top of the page

Adding a new protocol / Editing a protocol

You must have the survey admin role on your account. Contact your Trust's Nature Counts admin to get this role if you need it.

In the top menu click on Surveys then click on 'Add new protocol':

The following page presents various inputs for different pieces of information for a survey.

Title 

This is the name of the protocol and will determine the web address that this page sits on and how it appears in the list of protocols. It is required information. It also dictates the website URL that the protocol can be found at. Therefore once you've made the protocol and sent out the link to people then try not to change the title or the old URL won't work.

Overview

This information essentially serves to give the reader an overview of the survey type and appears in the list of surveys. It should be concise and clear.

Some of the text boxes have formatting controls at the top in a toolbar.

The B and I can be used to make text bold or italic

The chain link symbol can be used to add hyperlinks to other web pages. If you click on it this dialog box opens:

Key attributes

This is where you define what you are actually surveying, and what attributes you are trying to measure, and any relevant targets of these attributes.

For example, S&RWT's woodland condition assessment has these key attributes:

• Evidence of browsing pressure present in <40% of woodland grid squares. 

• No INNS present in woodland. 

• 10 – 40% of woodland grid squares have areas of temporary open space, which is at least 10m in diameter.

• Width of woodland edge habitat should be at least 1.5 times the height of the nearest mature tree. 

• 80-100% woodland grid squares with >3 snags (standing dead wood including dead wood in live trees) in each square. 

• >50% of woodland grid squares have large* fallen dead wood (including large branches, stems, excluding stumps). 

• >3 tree species in each woodland grid square. 

• Evidence of regeneration present within >40% of grid squares, of which 80% is native.

Protocol description

Provide some more information about the survey.

Timing

When does the survey take place - what year, what time of day?

Skill level

What level of experience does someone need to do this survey? Are there any relevant qualifications that are needed to do this survey?

Materials/equipment

What is the full kit list for this survey?

Method

This is where you go into the full detail on how the survey is completed. Ask a colleague to read through it and see if they think they could do the survey based on that information. If they say yes then you've succeeded in writing a good method section!

References

For each reference (eg. a book, handbook, website, scientific paper) enter one into the box. If you need to add extras then click the 'Add another item' button.

Here's an guide how to format references in APA format: https://www.mendeley.com/guides/apa-citation-guide

Sites

This is where the survey is carried out. Again you can add multiple sites and reorder items.

When you are looking at all survey protocols you can filter by this information.

If this is the first protocol you have entered for this site then just type in the site name. If you have already added a protocol and added a site then these sites will appear as you start to type (see in the example Wyming Brook appears when I start to type because previously I added a protocol with 'Wyming Brook' as the site.

Your Trust's nature reserves have been preloaded into here.

Survey type

What type of survey is it? Again you can add new values or select pre-existing values. The function of this is not to add detail but just be able to sort by different surveys types. Here are some suggested survey types:

• Grid-based

• Transect

• Point count

• Marine

Species groups

What types of organisms are you surveying. Again you can add new values or select pre-existing values. You can be as specific or broad as you like. The usefulness of these groups is that you can filter by these when you are viewing all protocols. Here are some examples:

• Insects

• Birds

• Herptiles

• Plants

• Grasses

• Odonata

• Mammals

Survey forms

This is where you can link survey forms you've created using the survey builder to the protocols. As you start typing you'll see your survey forms are suggested in a drop down. If you're creating your survey forms after your protocol you can always go back to this and add these later. Again you can add multiple survey forms by clocking the 'Add another item'.

Revisions

When putting together the protocol pages we wanted to make sure that we could track changes to the protocol over time. Here you can provide some comments on what you have edited (if you are editing rather than creating a protocol). Here's my example of a revision log message. This could be improved, for example, what did I change about the methods section? Who knows? Write good revision log messages, you'll thank yourself later.

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