Item: COMPREHENSION VALIDATION OF THE REVISED EAWS DANGER SCALE DESCRIPTORS: LESSONS FROM A LARGE-SCALE EUROPEAN END USER SURVEY ON AVALANCHE RISK PERCEPTION
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Title: COMPREHENSION VALIDATION OF THE REVISED EAWS DANGER SCALE DESCRIPTORS: LESSONS FROM A LARGE-SCALE EUROPEAN END USER SURVEY ON AVALANCHE RISK PERCEPTION
Proceedings: Proceedings, International Snow Science Workshop, Whistler, BC, Canada, 2026
Authors:
- Philip A. Ebert [ University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria ]
- Frank Techel [ WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos, Switzerland ]
- Matthias Walcher [ Avalanche Warning Service Tyrol, Innsbruck, Austria ]
- Benjamin Reuter [ Météo France, Briançon, France ]
- Igor Chiambretti [ AINEVA, Trento, Italy ]
- Lorenzo Bertranda [ Meteomont Carabinieri, Italy ]
- Montse Bacardit Peñarroya [ Centre de Lauegi – Conselh Generau d'Aran, Vielha e Mijaran, Spain ]
- Jaka Ortar [ Slovenian Environment Agency, Slovenia ]
- Mark Diggins [ 9Scottish Avalanche Information Service, Aviemore, Scotland ]
- Karsten Müller [ Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, Oslo, Norway ]
- Gerit Pfuhl [ Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway ]
Date: 2026-09-28
Abstract: The descriptors of the European avalanche danger scale, in use since 1993, are being revised. In June 2025 EAWS forecasters agreed on a new provisional wording and, in doing so, provided its content validation. Because the descriptors are first of all a public communication tool, we ran a comprehension validation: a survey testing whether end users read the wording as forecasters intend. It ran online from 3 February to 8 April 2026 in six languages and retained 17,335 responses after cleaning, of which 15,749 were completed. All wording comparisons were randomised between subjects. We evaluated each proposal against three conditions: correctness (do users recover the order forecasters intend?), simplicity (how easy is the task?), and increase (does the wording convey how much the danger increases from level to level?). For avalanche occurrence the main finding is reassuring: all four wording variants were ranked accurately (83–92% correct), and most differences that reach significance in the pooled data do not survive within individual languages. Only the variant that drops the distribution wording is clearly weaker. On the increase condition the variants do separate. Respondents placed the four statements on a continuous danger scale; wording level 2 as “in some places” rather than “in a few places” moves it closer to level 3 and shrinks the perceived difference between moderate to considerable from 36% to 31% of the distance between levels 1 and 4 (Cohen's d = 0.39, p < 0.001). For size and impact the wording effect is large: adding size class words (small, medium, large, very large) to the impact wording raised accuracy from 61% to 95% and self-reported ease from 4.7 to 6.1 (Cohen's d = 1.04). Most of that failure comes from using “bury and kill” at both levels 1 and 2, which makes them hard to tell apart. We also report how users read seven phrases that forecasters already use. For avalanche occurrence, the largest differences are between languages rather than between wordings.
Object ID: ISSW2026_P3.11.pdf
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15788/1790099448
Language of Article: English
Presenter(s): Frank Techel
Keywords: Avalanche danger scale, risk communication, risk perception, descriptors, multilingual communication
Page Number(s): 404 - 411
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