At the request of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) will establish an ad hoc committee to develop a strategy for evaluating stakeholder use of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) and selected other USGRCP products. The committee will develop criteria to prioritize the stakeholder groups that should be involved in such an evaluation, a conceptual and methodological framework and design for an evaluation, and plans for data collection and other information-gathering activities. The evaluation strategy will be designed to help determine to what extent these products meet decision and informational needs of selected stakeholder groups. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) principles will be considered and incorporated in the evaluation strategy. The committee will not provide a technical review of the assessments.
The evaluation strategy will address the following questions:
Regarding usefulness

• How and to what extent have stakeholders found NCA materials to be useful? What specifically has been useful?
• Does the selection of topics, regions, sectors, and level of detail (e.g., time frame, spatial resolution, subsector concerns) in the NCA (and USGCRP products it references as well as related USGCRP products) adequately address the stakeholders' needs?
• What decision or informational needs were well-addressed by the NCA? What decisions can stakeholders make given the level of information provided?

Regarding decision making, future needs and missing information/details/tools

• What future needs are anticipated? What additional types of decisions (if any) do stakeholders anticipate they would revisit given different topics and/or levels of detail? What information would be required to meet needs that USGCRP is not meeting already?
• What decision or information needs did the stakeholders expect would be met by the NCA but were not?
• For stakeholders whose decision or informational needs were not met by the NCA and selected USGCRP products, what is the reason? What other products/materials, including other USGCRP and non-USGCRP products, did they use, if any?

Stakeholder awareness and engagement

• How aware or involved were different stakeholder groups in the NCA development process and how did this influence their use of the report? For stakeholders who were not previously aware of the NCA development process, how did they become aware of the NCA?
• How effectively does the NCA development process engage historically marginalized communities and underrepresented stakeholders?
• How understandable and navigable is the NCA, including the report documents and findings, and underlying supporting data? Is the NCA information presented in a format that informs decision making?