ML20235D625
| ML20235D625 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Shoreham File:Long Island Lighting Company icon.png |
| Issue date: | 07/08/1987 |
| From: | Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| To: | |
| References | |
| OL-3-A-004, OL-3-A-4, NUDOCS 8709250286 | |
| Download: ML20235D625 (175) | |
Text
, _ _ _.
8~322-6[3 k.
l 7/2/g 7 A-87 SEP 17 A11gg3 71200000 Tuswalsh
- f. I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA-2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION:
.l BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD l
5
X l
In the Matter of:
I 6
LONG ISLAND LIGHTING COMPANY
- Docket No. 50-322-OL-)
I (Shoreham Nuclear Power Station, (EP Exercise) 7 Unit 1) i
___________________________________x l
8 1
l Court of Claims 1
State of New York j
State Office Building 10 Third Floor Courtroom
- j Veterans Memorial Highway Hauppauge, New York 11788 12 Monday, April 27, 1987
'3 The hearing in the above-entitled matter reconvened, pursuant to notice, at 9:02 o' clock a.m.
Id BEFORE:
15 JOHN H.
FRYE, III, Chairman Atomic Safety and Licensing Board 16 U.
S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Bethesda, Maryland 20555 g
OSCAR H. PARIS, Me.nber
,8 Atomic Safety and Licensing Board U.
S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Bethesda, Maryland 20555 20 FREDERICK J.
SHON, Member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board 21 U.
S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Bethesda, Maryland 20555 23 WUCLEAR REGULAT0tf COMMisS10N
-' No. 5 0 M b O h Official tah. No.
24
. sttu er 04am Na dca v o ~- (A d* h I
'S JUI"'ED
- .it RECElviD -
- 'meauf RLitCitD _
Ct.*1't cts g,2;gggg gWOjgg2 Cintractx DATE os, m,
uuss o
__,71200000 3774 q
ucwalsh i
j 1
APPEARANCES:
2 3
pn Behalf of Lona Island Lichtina Company:
KATHY E.
B. McCLESKEY, ESQUIRE SCOTT D.
MATCHETT, ESQUIRE-
]
a Hunton & Williams I
5 707 East Main Street P.
O.
Box 1535 6
Richmond, Virginia 23212 J
7 On Behalf of Suffolk County:
1 KARLA J.
LETSCHE, ESQUIRE SUSAN M.
CASEY, ESQUIRE
]
9 Kirkpatrick & Lockhart South Lobby, 9th Floor ja 1800 M Street, N. W.
ji Washington, D.
C.
20036-5891 On Bebalf of the State of New York:
12 RICHARD J.
ZAHNLEUTER, ESQUIRE
'3 Special Counsel to the Governor 4
Execut,1ve Chamber l_
j, Room 229 State Capitol 15 Albany, New York 12224 1
16 On Behalf of the NRC:
CHARLES A.
BARTH, ESQUIRE ORESTE RUSS PIRFO, ESQUIRE l
18 l
U.
S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission 7735 Old Georgetown Road
,9 Bethesda, Maryland 20814 20 l
21 22 23 24 l
25 o
I
~l:u
?
71200000 3775 su walsh i
j C0N. TENTS 3
Direct Cross Redirect Recross Voir Dire I
PHILIP EVANS 3777 3787 l
SUSAN C.
SAEGERT 5
i STEPHEN COLE l
SPENCER FORD ROWAN, JR.
l
... e e EXHIBITS 8
Identified Admitted LILCO Exercise Exhibits 5, 6,
7 3903 LILCO Exercise Exhibits 8, 9,
10 3903 l
10 II LAY-IN TESTIMONY 12 Following Pace I3 Testimony of Evans, Saegert, Cole Saegert, Rowan and Loftus 3786 15 A. M.
RECESS Page 3822 LUNCHEON RECESS 16 Page 3889 P.
M.
RECESS Page 3890 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 l
J 71200101.
3776 marysimons-I PROCEE-DINGS j
' JUDGE FRYE:
Good morning.
Dc you want to introduce your panel, Ms.
Letsche?
3 MS LETSCHE:
Yes, I certainly will.
Sitting up at the witness table, beginning closest to the Judges, first, is Dr. Susan Saegert.
Sitting.
f to her right is Dr. Stephen Cole.
Sitting to Dr. Cole's 8
9 right is Philip Evans.
And sitting to Mr. Evans's right is 10 Mr. Ford. Rowan.
11 JUDGE FRYE: ' Fine.
Thank you-12 Could I ask you to rine, please?
'3 Whereupon, PHILIP EVANS S
SUSAN C. SAEGERT 16 STEPHEN COLE l
and
'8 SPENCER FORD ROWAN, JR.
were called as witnesses on behalf of Suffolk County and, 20 having been first duly sworn by Judge Frye, were examined i
21 I
and testified as follows:
JUDGE FRYE:
Thank you very m'uch.
l 23 24 25 t
k
}
1 71200101 3787 marysimons I
MS. LETSCHE:
This panel is available for cross-2 examination.
3 CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MS..McCLESKEY:
5 Q
Messrs. Evans and Rowan, I see.that you've.-
6 struck a paragraph on page 96 of an answer-that goes.to'you
~
7 two.
Can you tell me why you've struck'it?
8 A
(Witness Rowan)
Just a~second.
We're looking for it.
'O (Pause.)
Upon examination it appeared the spokesperson 12 was trying to describe the status of the remaining persons
'3 who were unaccounted for, and.we were not sure.that.there was the discrepancy between the Figure No. 10 and Figure i
15 14.
So we decided to delete that.
16 Q
And was based on review of the video tapes of
'7 the ENC 7
'8 A
I think it was the transcripts, but it might have been the video tapes.
It's been a while now.
We have-20 been going over this material for three months now.
21 0
Thank you.
22 Professor Cole, you conducted a survey on Long.
23 Island in December of 1986 to find out approximately how 24 many people would attempt to evacuate in response to a 25 Shoreham accident, right?
):
-ll
-E
71200101 3788
,marysimons 1
A (Witness Cole)
Yes.
2 Q
And in the survey you tried to include the actual messages used during the exercise, right?
4 A
We tried to follow them as closely as possible 5
given the constraints of telephone interviewing.
6 Q
Right.
In fact, you state in your survey report, which is Attachment 14 to your testimony, at page 10 8
that "The questions used in the current survey were all i
based upon LILCO's responses to the exercise scenario, 10 including its proposed simulated radio announcements and I
n protective action recommendations to the public during the 12 l
February 1986 exercise of its emergency response plan."
j
'3 And you go on to state that "Although th'e EBS 14 messages used by LILCO during the exercise were too long and is i
too complex to use in their entirety in a telephone survey, 16 the questions utilized the actual wording of the EBS messages wherever possible. Where it was not possible, care was taken to summarize the content faithfully."
Is that right?
A Yes.
21 Q
Now in your testimony you also say that in the 22 survey you tried to include tone and situation specific 23 information from the messages, right?
2' A
Yes.
25 Q
Could you please tell us which question on the f
I I
p il
i 71200101 3789 marysimons 3
survey or questions in your view take the EBS messages'into 2
. account?
3 I will note for the record that Professor Cole's questionnaire begins at page'53 of Attachment 14 to his-5 testimony..
6 (Pause while th'e witness locates the passage 7
referred to.)
8 A
(Witness Cole)
The questions that utilized the information that was given out by LILCO during the exercise-were the scenario questions beginning with Question 12, i
which was based upon EBS message'No. 1 broadcast around 7, j
12 and that is very heavily based almost word for word in most 1
13 cases on the actual EBS message.
Then the other questions
'd were based upon follow-up messages.
13 was based upon, and 15 I would have to check the exact numbers, but 2 and 14 was-16 based upon 5 and 15 was based upon 7, as I recall.
'I Q
Are Questions 12, 13, 14, and 15, in your view,
'8 the only questions in the survey that were based upon the I9 EBS messages?
20 A
There were other questions which related to the 21 EBS messages.
For example, in one of the messages LILCO 22 asked people who had been advised to evacuate the EPZ to 23 report to reception. centers to be monitored for possible 24 radioactive contamination.
25 So we asked the question, No. 16, based upon c
71200101 3790 merysimons 1
what people's response was to that part of the EBS message.
2 In some of the EBS messages LILCO announced a 3
telephone number that people could call if they wanted 4
additional information as to what they should do, and we 5
R based one of our questions, 17, on that part of the EBS 6
i
- message, j
7 So it's not only the scenarios, but several of i
l 8
the other questions here were based upon information that j
9 was included in the EBS messages.
10 Q
Now, Professor Cole, you've done telephone 11 surveys yourself before perhaps in a earlier stage in your 12 career, haven't you?
j 3
A Oh, yes.
0 Could you please read Question 12 aloud to us as 15 you would if you were reading it over the phone to a 16 respondent?
17 A
Ckay, sure.
"Now I would like to ask you a few 18 questions about what you would do if something happened at 19
~
the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant.
Assume that the Shoreham 10 Nuclear Power Plant is licensed and begins to operate.
We i
l 21 would like to know what you would do if something happened at the plant.
23
" Suppose that you were at home on a weekday 2'
morning and you woke up at 7 a.m. and turned on the radio, 25 you heard on the radio that there had been an incident at I
71200101 3791 l
merysimons I
I the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station and an' alert condition f
2 was declared at 6:17 a.m.
3
'"A LILCO representative said'that no' release of radiation had occurred, but-recommended that. schools within 5
the 10-mile emergency planning zone should' remain closed.
i 6
He.said that if you live more than 10 miles away from the 7
plant there is no reason:for you to take any action.
8 "When you. heard this message on the radio,~would'
)
you and members of your family go about your. normal business
'O or stay inside your home or leave your home and go further "I
away from the plant?"
12 Q
Thank you very much.
I3 Now you said that this question corresponds to Id EBS Message No.1, which is in Attachment. 8 to your I5 testimony.
Would you take a look at that.
I would like to 16 ask you some questions about it.
'7 (Pause.)
'8 A
(Witness Cole)
Yes, I have it.
Q That message is about 4 pages long, isn't it?
20 A
Yes.
It's double spaced.with rather large 21 n.argins, but yes.
22 Q
Now in your Question 12 you tell the listener-23 that there has been incident at Shoreham, right?
24 A
Right.
25 0
And you tell the listener that an alert was
_________-__a_--.-.__.-.-----
71200101 3792 1
marysimons i
declared at 6:17, right?
2 A
Yes.
3 Q
And you tell-the listener that a LILco j
d representative says that no radiation has been released, 1
5 right?
6 A
Right.
7 0
And you tell the listener that schools within 8
the 3 0-mile EPZ are to remain closed?
9 i
A Yes.
i O
And you tell the listener that if you live 11 outside the 10-mile zone you need not take any action at-I
~
12 this time, right?
'3 A
Yes.
'I
~
O Now EBS Message No. 1 tells the listener that is there is an EBS system, right, in the first line of the EBS message "This is the emergency. broadcast system"?
17 A
Yes.
18 0
That tells the listening that there is an 89 emergency broadcast system, right?
20 A
Yes.
(
Q And that is not in your questions, is it?
A No.
23 Q
And then the EBS message tells the listener that 24 the EBS system has been activated, right?
l 25 A
Yes.
H 1
l t
I i
d
-. ]
l 71200101
.3793 marysimons 1
Q And that's not in your question, is it?
2 A
No.
]
3 Q
Then the.EBS message goes on to say that there d
has been.an incident at.Shoreham which corresponds to7your 5
question?
6 A-Yes.
7 Q
That there was an' alert at 6:17 which-8 corresponds to your~ question, and that no; release.has' j
9 occurred, and.that corresponds to your question, right?
1 10 A
Yes.
11 Q
The EBS message goes on toisaylthat'no' release.
12 is imminent'; isn't that right?-
13 A
Yes.-
j Id Q
That's not in your question, is.it?
15 A
It says "A LILCO representative said that no.
16 release of radiation had occurred.
17,
Q Right, but your question does not'say that no 18 '
release is imminent, does'it?
19 A
No.
20 0
The EBS message says that an alert.is one of-21 four classifications, right?
22 A
Yes.
23 Q
And that is not in your question, is it?
L 24 A
No.
25 Q
The EBS message says'that that. classification.
l 1
71200101-3794 marysimons I
could indicate'a jeopardized safety system, right?
y 1
2 A
Yes.
Q That's not in your question,.is it?
.I 3
d A
No.
5 Q
The EBS message says that the Director of LERO
)
i 6
is consulting with others; isn't that<right?
7 A
Yes.
a i
il Q
And that's not in your question, is it?
)
a 9
A No.
Q Then the EBS message says that schools within!
10 11 the 10-mile EPZ will remained closed, and that is-indicated 12 in your que'stion, isn't it?
13 A
Yes.
14 Q
The EBS message then goes on to.say-that the I
15 school plan is part of an emergency plan, right?
l 16 A
- yes, 17 Q
That's not in your question, is it?
18 A
No.
19 Q
And then the EBS message says that the emergency 20 plan was adopted prior to Shoreham operating, right?
21 A
- yes, 22 Q
And that's not in your question, is it?
23 A
No.
24 O
The EBS message says that the school closure
(
25 does not mean that a release of radiation is imminent, 4
'71200101 3795 marysimons I
right?
2
'A Where are we in it?
3 0
We are on page 2 in the paragraph. labeled 1.
d A
Yes, you're right.
5 Q
And the EBS message' tells people that parents 6
shouldn't drive to the school to pick up.their children, 7
right?
a A
Yes.
9
.MS. LETSCHE:- Judge Frye, I'm going to object at 10 this point.
I mean the message says what it says and Dr.
Il Cole's question says what it says.
I think they both speak l
12 for themsel~ves and they have both been adraitted into 13 evidence.
14 Going through it line by line and repeating what's one and what's in the other I don't think serves any 15 16 purpose, and I would object.
l 17 MS. McCLESKEY:
I disagree with the objection 18 strenuously.
This testimony is based throughout on the 19 assertion that the survey questions correspond to the EBS 20 messages, and I think I'm entitled to elicit from this 21 witness how that correspondence works.
22 JUDGE FRYE:
Overruled.
i 23 BY MS. McCLESKEY:
24 Q
We're still on EBS Message No. 1, and the EBS 25 message goes on to say that.if you're in 10-mile zone, you
71200101 3796
___marysimons I
will have received a brochure, right?
2 A
Yes.
i 3
Q And that's not in your question, is it?
d A
No.
5 Q
And it tells people to refer to the brochure, 6
right?
7 A
Yes.
8 Q
And that's not in your question, is it?
9 A
No.
i 10 0
And it tells people that the brochure will tell 11 them which planning zone they live in, right?
12 A
- yes, l
13 0
And that's not in your question, is it?
- ~
Id A
No.
l I
15 Q
The EBS message then tells them there are going 16 to be future messages, right?
17 A
Yes.
18 Q
And that's not in your question, is it?
19 A
No.
20 Q
And the EBS message tells them that the brochure l
21 will help them understand future messages, right?
22 A
Yes.
23 0
That's not in your question, is it?
24 A
No.
I 25 0
Then the EBS message describes the 10-mile EPZ li 0
o
1 71200101 3797 marysimons y
1 boundaries by street; isn't that right?
2 A
Yes.
3 0
And that's not in your question, is'it?
I 4
A No.
~
5 Q
And the EBS message tells people that they would 6
have received other mailings -about the EPZ. if :they live in 7
its.right?
8 A
Yes.
9 Q
And that's not in your question, is it?
10 A
No.
Il Q
Then the F;tS message says you don't need to take 12 any actions' if you're not in the EPZ, and you did include 13 that information in your question, didn't you?
14 A
Yes.
15 Q
The EBS message then says if no brochure is 16 available, you can look in the telephone book for the 17 information about zones, right?
18 A
Yes.
19 0
That's not in your question, is it?
20 A
No.
21 Q
And then the EBS message says if you can't 22 locate your brochure you can also look in the Yellow Book?
23 A
Yes.
2d Q
And that's not in your question, is it?
25 0
No.
i
l
'200101 3798 l
rysimons
)
l I
Q Now would you mind taking a minute to explain to
)
2 some who may not know what a Yellow Book is?
3 A
A Yellow Book?
I presume you mean it's the I
Yellow Pages, or I don't know it is then.
l d
5 Q
You think it's referring to the Yellow Pages 6
that's distributed by the phone company?
I 7
A Yes, or I don't know what it is, and I don't think that most people would know what it is either.
)
8 Q
I thought in previous testimony that you had I
10 described an additional mailing that's sent out to Long Islanders that is a commercial venture called the Yellow l
~
12 l
Book that h'as -- I'm sorry, it may have been somebody else.
l 13 JUDGE PARIS:
Is it not the Yellow Pages?
l 14 MS. McCLESKEY:
No, it ---
15 JUDGE PARIS:
At this point I think the record 16 is Confused.
17 MS. McCLESKEY:
In addition to the Yellow Pages l
18 which the company distributes, there is apparently on Long 19 Island a Yellow Book that people get that is a commercial 20 venture that compiles a lot of the restaurants and l
l l
21 commercial establishments and everybody refers to that I
l-22 frequently, and in addition to the regular phone book, the 23 maps are in the Yellow Book and the EBS messages are 24 referring to that Yellow Book as well.
25 JUDGE PARIS:
Thank you.
1 l
3799 71200101 marysimons 1i BY MS. McCLESKEY:
i 2
Q The EBS message says that that information about I
EPZ zones is also provided on posters in various public 3
places, businesses and parks, doesn't it?
d 5
A Yes.
6 Q
And that's not in your question either, it it?
7 A
No.
I 8
Q Then the message repeats certain information.
i i
It repeats the information that Shoreham is in an alert, j
9 10 that there has been no release of radiation and that no l
11 release is imminent; isn't that right?
1 1
12 A
' Correct.
13 Q
Your questions doesn't repeat any information 14 for the listener, does it?
15 A
No.
16 Q
Then the EBS message goes on to tell the l
17 listener that it will be repeated every 15 minutes, right?
18 A
Yes.
i 19 0
And that if new information is available sooner l
20 that a new message will be issued, right?
21 A
Yes.
l 22 Q
And that the message can be heard on the station l
23 that the listener is tuned to now, right?
l i
24 A
Yes.
25 0
And it tells the listener to keep listening for
l 71200101 3800 marysimons
)
l I
l further messages, right?
2 A
- yes, q
l 3
0 Will you please turn to Question 13 on page 54
]
I d
of your Attachment 14 and read that question as you would i
5 for a survey.
6 g
aSuppose that in order to find out what had 7
happened at Shoreham you kept your radio on and at 8:45 in 8
the morning you heard that a site area emergency condition 1
9 was declared at 8:19 a.m.
A site area emergency indicates 10 that a major plant safety system could fail.
l Il "A LILCO representative said that a very minor 12 release of ' radiation had occurred and recommended that j
13 schools within 10 miles of the shoreham plant should remain
\\
id closed and all milk producing animals within two miles of l
15 the Shoreham plant should be moved into shelters and placed 16 on stored feed.
17 "The LILCO representative said that if you live 18 more than 10 miles away from the plant there is no-reason 19 for you to take any action.
l 20 "When you heard this message on the radio would l
21 you and members of your family go about your normal business 1
22 or stay inside your home or leave your home and go further-l 23 away from the plant?"
24 Q
Now I believe you said that that question 25 corresponds to message No. 2 of the EBS messages; is that 1
b l
l l
71200101 3801 marysimons 1
right?
2 A
Yes.
i I
3 Q
Would you turn to message No. 2 in your d.
5 (Witness. complies.)
6 Do you have it?
i i
7 A
Yes.
i 8
Q Now your question gives the listener the i
9 information that a site area was declared at 8:19, right?
~
10 A
Yes.
l 11 Q
And that the site area means that a major safety i
~
12 system could fail?
j i
13 A
Yes.
1 14 Q
And that LILCO has said that a minor release of i
15 radiation has occurred?
I 16 A
Very minor, yes.
l 17 Q
Very minor, I beg your pardon.
18 And that schools in the 10-mile EPZ are to j
19 remain closed?
20 A
Yes.
I 21 Q
And ti.at milk producing animals within two miles 22 should be sheltered and placed on stored feed?
23 A
Yes.
2d Q
And if you live greater than 10 miles from the i
25 plant there is no reason to take action?
N
_________-a
71200101 3802 marysimons F
I A
Yes.
2 Q
EBS Message No. 2 is also about four pages long, 3
isn't it?
4 A
Yes.
5 0
And it, too, tells the listener, first, that 6
there is an emergency broadcast system, right?
7 A
Yes.
8 Q
And that it has been activated, right?
9 A
Yes.
10 0
And that information isn't in your question?-
II A
No.
' Canwestipulatethatallofthisinformatio$1 12 13 that is in the message that clearly is not written in here Id i
is not in the question or do we have to go through it line 15 by line?
16 MS. McCLESKEY:
I don't think we can stipulate 17 this matter.
18 WITNESS COLE:
Okay.
M JUDGE FRYE:
There is going to be a lot of 20 duplication here, it would seem to me.
I mean all the 21 messages, I assume, will say this is the emergency broadcast 22 l
system and the emergency broadcast system has been activated 23 because of an incident at Shoreham.
24 MS. McCLESKEY:
Yes, sir.
25 JUDGE FRYE:
Do you need to repeat all of that
.___._...-_--_.---u--
I i
71200101 3803' marysimons I
with each one do you think or can we short-cut it and just 2
pick up things that may be different from the first one?
3 MS. McCLESKEY:
My difficulty is that our 4
testimony is that the repetition makes a difference.
5 JUDGE FRYE:
Okay.
6 BY MS. McCLESKEY:
j 7
Q Now the EBS message says that there has been an 8
incident at Shoreham and you told your listeners that 1
9 basically by telling them there was a site area emergency 10 declared, right?
11 A
Yes.
i 12 Q
And the EBS message says that the site area was
)
l 13 declared at 8:19 and that's in your question?
14 A
Yes.
]
15 Q
And a very minor release has occurred and that's j
16 in your question?
.i 1
17 A
Yes.
I 18 Q
It also tells the listener that the site area is 19 one of four classifications, right?
20 A
yes.
21 O
And that's not in your question, is it?
22 A
No.
i 23 Q
It then tells the listener that a site area 2d emergency means a major system could fail, right?
25 A
Yes.
[
___.____--_l
i
(
71200101 3804 marysimons i
i I
O And that's also in your question?
2 A
- yes, 3
0 And then it tells the listener that there exists d
an organization called the Local Emergency Response 5
Organization, right?
1 6
A Yes.
7 C
And that's not in your question?
8 A
Right.
9 I
Q And that the Local Emergency Response 10 Organization is for people within 10 miles of Shoreham, right?
l 12 A
+yes, i
13 Q
And that's not in your question?
l Id A
No.
15 Q
And that LERO, the Local Emergency Response 16 Organization, we refer tc it as LERO, has been activated, 37 right?
18 A
Yes.
19 Q
And that's not in your question?
20 A
Right.
t' 21 Q
And LERO is responding to an incident at the 22 plant, right?
23 A
Yes.
2d Q
And that's not in your question?
25 Correct.
s
___A
L71200101 3805 rarysimons:
1 Q
Its Director has consulted with otherfpeopler.it-2 says that, right?
3 A'
Yes.
-4 0
That's not in'your question?.
5 A
Right.
6 Q
And the Director after Consulting is 7
recommending' protective actions, right?
8 A
Yes.
9 Q
And that's not in your question?
10 A
Well, we say a LILCO representative said that.a 11 very minor' release or radiation had occurred an'd recommended 12 that schoolt within 10' miles of the Shoreham plant.
So we 13 give the basic protective action that had been recommended 14 at that~ time.
I 15 Q
Right, and.you' attribute it-solely to a LILCO l
16 representative, right?.
q 17 A
Yes.
IB Q
Okay.
19 A
That's the person who gave'it, isn't it?
2c Q
Then the EBS message goes onLto-say that schools 21 within 10 miles should continue to implement early 22 dismissal,-and you put that in~your question?
23 A
- Yes, i
2d Q
Then the EBS message goes on that dismissal is 25 part of an emergency plan, right?
l l
71200101 3806 marysimons j
i A
Yes.
2 Q
And the plan was-adopted before Shoreham was 3
operating, right?
'd A
Yes.
5 Q
That a release of radiation -- it doesn't mean
)
6 that a release of radiation is imminent, right?
1 7
A Yes.
I should point out that we did eliminate 8
the confusing aspects of this EBS message.
At one point it 9
says a minor release has occurred and at.another point it i
10 said that a release hasn't occurred, and we did eliminate J
that so as not to confuse the respondents.
)
12 g
- So it's jour testimony that the reason in EBS
)
13 message No. 2 that the statement, the fact that children ar'e Id being dismissed early doesn't mean a release of radiation is 15 imminent, was not put in your Question 13 is that it would i
l 16 have confused people?
17 A
You've not given me the opportunity to tell you 16 why we left out any of these things.
I hope that you do 19 give me that opportunity so that I can explain it.
l l
20 MS. McCLESKEY:
Well, if I don't, I'm sure l
21 somebody will.
l-22 BY MS. McCLESKEY:
23 Q
But is it then your testimony that on this 24 particular item that the fact that a school dismissal plan 25 is being effected doesn't mean that a. release of radiation 4
l t
__a
i 71200101 3807 1
rarysimons j
1 1
is imminent was deleted from the question because it would j
i 2
have confused people?
l 3
A (Witness Cole)
The primary reason for deleting 4
any of the information that we deleted was that, first of j
1 5
all, you just can't read a form question like this'on the 6
phone and have people understand it.
l I
7 The information that we deleted we thought was l
j 8
unessential and/or unintelligible or. confusing, that people i
9 wouldn't know what some of these things were.
So those were 10 the primary reasons why we deleted this information.
I We feel that we have all of the essential
~
12 information in the language of the EBS messages in these l
l 13 questions.
Id Q
Well, Professor Cole, and I've been told by Dr.
i 15 Mileti, who I have been referring to as Dr. Mileti for to years, that Professor is actually the appropriate title and 17 I'm sorry if I've been misnaming.
18 Could you please look at EBS message No. 2 and tell me which items you deleted because they were confusing?
19
- 0 (Witness complies.)
21 A
Well, first of all -- do you want me to start 22 from the beginning?
23 Q
Yes, sir.
24 A
Okay.
First of all, this is the emergency 25 broadcast system.
People. don't know what the emergency l
.---_______1
l i
71200101 3808
)
marysimons 1
broadcast system is, and so we deleted that.
I I
2 Q
Do you think that that was borne out in your l
3 focus groups that people don't know'what the emergency y
i I
d broadcast system is?
i 5
A Yes, among most people.
They did not understand l
l 6
it.
So to say that the emergency' broadcast system has been l
7 activated due to an incident at at the Shoreham Nuclear 8
Power Station, we tell them that there was an incident at l
j 9
the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station.
We were very careful to' 10 use the word " incident."
We did not use any other word l
l which may have been used to characterize what went on at
~
12 that power' station.
So we tried to keep as close as
)
13 possible to the words.
Id
~
We did not have to use this as n' test because is it's a questionnaire.
So it was totally irrelevant.
16 We did tell them a site area emergency was-17 declared at 8:19 a.m.
We did not have to say at the 18 Shoreham Nuclear Power Station.
It was redundant.
We I
l' already told them that that's what was going on.
20 Q
Right.
Professor Cole, my question was could i
21 you identify the items in the EBS message that were deleted l
22 from the question because they would have confused people?
23 A
The only way that I could do that is to go over 2d the whole message line by line and word by word.
I cannot 25 remember now which words or lines from this message were i
_..______-__Y_-__--
f 71200101 3809 marysimons 1
deleted four or five months ago because they.were-2 confusing.
3 I know that we went through these messages very d
carefully and we tried to put in as much as possible of.
5 these messages, whatever was reasonable as far as the 6
length.
We tried to stick to the language that was in these i
7 messages.as closely as possible.
The only things.that.we-8 deleted were information that we thought people wouldn't 9
understand, that were non-essential, that were repetitive 10 and in general we feel that -- or I feel that I have all of 11 the essential information included in your messages in your 12 language in these messages.
13 In fact, I feel that these questions are 14 significantly clearer than the actual E55 messages, and that is if you were to conduct a test in which you read your EBS 16 messages and you read our questions to people and then you 17 were to ask them which were clearer or ask them a series of IB questions about them, you would find that our questions are l
19 substantially clearer than your EBS messages.
20 0
Well, let's stay with EBS Message No. 2 and look 1
21 at the bottom of the first page, that first paragrapa which 22 says, it's the single sentence that says "The Local 23 Emergency Response Organization for residents living in the 24 10-m21e emergency planning zone around Shoreham has been 25 activated and is responding to the incident."
i d
l
-71200101 3810 marysimons I
Now that is not in your question.
Is that one I
2 of the things that you did not put in your' question because
~
3 it's confusing?
q i
d A
There are two reasons why that didn't go in, as 1
5 I recall.
First of all, people don't know what the Local 6
Emergency Response Organization is.
We are interviewing i
l 7
Long Island residents, real people, and everybody in this i
j 8
room know what LERO is, but the average person does not have the slightest idea what this is.
So that terms doesn't mean 10 anything.
i 11 The second reason why we deleted that paragraph 12 was we felt that it wasn't essential and it did not convey 13 any of the essential information from that EBS message.
~
Id O
How did you define essential information for the 15 purposes of your questionnaire?
)
16 '
A The information that described what went on at 1
17 the plant and what people should do or shouldn't do.in the l
8 case of the last part, that they shouldn't evacuate or that
'9 they should evacuate.
.i 20 We have in here that a site area emergency was 21 declared and we have the time.
We have that a very minor 22 release has occurred.
We have all of the basics in your 23 language in this question.
You can't read something like 24 this over the telephone.
It's just too long and people 25 can't understand something that takes 10 or 15 minutes to
,1 i
1.
l l
l 1
-71200101-3811-marysimons 1-read on the telephone.
2 In other circumstances, as in the. focus. groups' 3
when you can have' people sitting around~and play.them and l
then play them over again if necessary they can' understand
'd 5
.that, but not on theftelephone.:
6 Q
So for your purposes-you gave people the-l 7
information in the questionnaire that theycneeded.to answer 8
your questions?
9 A
We felt that we' gave them.all of the important 10 essential information in these EBS messages in'the language il of the EBS messages and, we only deleted the most' minimum
~
12 things that we had or things that just would be confusing.
13 As in the case of this message, every one.in these 14 proceedings has recognized that there is an inconsistency in 15 this message about the amount of' radiation that was;or'was 16 not released.
. ell, we cleaned that up.
We did not want to W
17 ask a question that would be totally' confusing to people on is the telephone, as this EBS message would'have been we 19 believe if it would have been aired.
20 So we cleaned the mescage up in that case.
We 21 took.out terms or jargon that people wouldn't underntand.
22 But we feel that if you look at what our. question has in it 23 and what the EBS message has that you will have to. conclude 24 that we have the essential information and the proper 25 language in this question.
__ _______-_ _ _ _ a
\\
j 71200101 3812 j
marysimons i
1 And, furthermore, I say that if you were to get 2
a thousand people, if we could afford to do that, to get a l
3 thousand people into an auditorium, a random selection of j
d people and play these EBS messages, or have them read as i
5 they were actually read during the exercise and then ask the 6
identical question, I'm absolutely Convinced on the basis of all my experience in survey research and in social science
)
7 i
e that we would get virtually identical results and that any
)
)
of the omissions that you're talking about had no 9
1 10 substantive effect on the results that we would get to the Il questions.
I'm absolutely convinced of that.
12 g
Let me just make sure I understand what you just a
13 said.
You think that you would have gotten the same answers
)
Id to your questions if you had played the entire EBS message is as if you simply asked the abbreviated question information 16 that was actually on the survey?
17 A
Yes.
If we had had the funds to let's say get a 18 random sample of 1,000 Long Island residents all together in 19 a big auditorium and then play for them the EBS massage as 20 it was actually read during the exercise, and perhaps we 21 could have used your tape, and then asked them the same 22 question as we have on this questionnaire, I'm convinced 23 that we would have gotten results which would have been 24 within the expected sampling error that wouldn't have been 25 any different than from what we obtained in this survey.
l
71200101 3813 marysimons 1
In other words, that the changes that we made 2
and the deletions that we made had no substantive effect on 3
our results.
4 A
(Witness Saegert)
I would like to say that 5
LILCO has pursued this approach before when it commissioned 6
the Yankelovitch survey on the idea that if people had more 7
information the survey results would be different than those l
8 Steve obtained by first playing some information about j
9 something that had happened and saying would you feel
)
l 10 differently if you were told that people outside the 10-mile l
i EPZ should do nothing, and the only effect of that l
II l
~
12 additional'information, which was the same kind of theory l
13 that LILCO is pursuing now, was that people who should 14 evacuate and who decided that they would not, a minuscule J
15 number to begin with, were more inclined to say well, no, I l
16 won't evacuate.
J 17 So it had no positive effect and a slight 18 negative effect, and I don't see that the kind of information LILCO is providing here would be any different l
19 1
20 than it was in that aborted attempt.
l 21 Q
In terms of responses to your questions?
22 A
Yes.
{f 23 Q
Professor Cole, could we go back then to EBS 24 Message No. 2.
25 A
Yes.
I
i 71200101 3814 mnrysimons I
l 1
Q We were comparing it to Question No. 13.
If it 2
your view that the information regarding the brochure that 3
we went through with the first question and the first EBS d
message about where the brochure is and that if you were in 5
the EPZ you would get a brochure and that sort of thing I
6 would have been confusing to telephone respondents?
7 A
(Witness Cole)
I believe it would have been i
8 confusing and irrelevant.
First of all, most of the I
respondents in the survey aren't in the EPZ and therefore I
10 would never get the brochure under any circumstances.
Second of all, and I may be wrong about this, 12 but from wHat people in the focus group reported to me,
{
13 nobody has gotten these brochures, or if they have -- am I Id wrong?
I don't know.
15 Q
No, sir, you are not wrong.
The brochures have 16 not yet been mailed out.
17 A
All right.
So in the focus groups we had people l
is who were in the EPZ and we did read these EBS messages
)
19 exactly as they are written here.
And people said, what are 20 these brochures?
We haven't gotten them and we don't know.
21 And then they started to ;iay that it was a joke.
Is LILCO 22 kidding that there is a nuclear emergency and we are l
l l
23 supposed to look in some brochure or the Yellow Pages?
And I
i 24 then they started to say how they throw those out and they 25 don't pay attention to that.
j I
}u l
i 71200101 3815 j
marysimons 1
No, I don't see that putting-in the fact'that 2
some information might be in a brochure would havec affected 3
the substantive ~results of our survey at all,.not at all.
4 4
Q Sir, going beck to EBS Message No. 2, we were at 5
the bottom of page 1-and you had told me that you thought 6
the Local Emergency Response Organization would have.
7 confused people.
Could you continue going _through the EBS
~
8 message and identify for me-the other items that you deleted 9
from your question because you thought they were. confusing.
l
\\
10 To focus you on the next page of'the EBS J
11 message, the next paragraph lists the people that the 12 Director of Local Response has conferred with to make his 13 recommendation, and you left that out of'all of.your 14 questions on your survey, didn't you?
j 15 A
Yes.
16 0
In fact, you left that out of your focus group 17 reading of the EBS messages, too, didn't you?
18 A
No.
We may have taken the name out.
I would 19 have to go back and look at-the transcript, but as I ---
l 20 0
Okay, we'll do that in a bit.
Do you don't have 21 to worry about guessing about i:.
22 A
As I recall, we certainly did not leave out 23 LILCO officials and nuclear engineers.
We may have left out j 24 the Suffolk County -- John Sucich, the Suffolk County.
I 25 Executive because obviously we did not want to confuse these
___ _ _ ___w L
71200101 3816 marysimons 1
people by mentioned somebody who they knew was not the 2
Suffolk County Executive.
3 0
I see.
d A
In the focus group we did say LILCO officials 5
and nuclear engineers.
That I'm positive of.
6 Q
Now in your question on your survey, Question 13 7
you simply said that a LILCO representative has said such j
8 and such.
Did you leave out the information contained in 9
the paragraph on the top of page 2 of EBS Message 2 because 10 you thought it would confuse people?
A The first line, "The Director of Local 12 Response,"'we left that out because people don't know what i
13 that is.
So that is what we refer to as a LILCO 1
~
Id representative.
People would understand what a LILCO 15 representative is, but they wouldn't know what the Director i
16 of Local Response was.
We felt that this was realistic to 17 refer to Jay Kessler as a LILCO representative.
18 Q
So you thought the words, " Director of Local 19 Response" would confuse people?
20 A
Yes, I'm sure they would have because people 21 don't know what the Director of Local Response is.
22 Q
And do you think the words "LILCO officials, 23 nuclear engineers, Suffclk County Executive and State 2d Department of Health would confuse people?
25 A
The LILCO, officials we thought was redundant.
I t
I
l 1'
71200101 3817 marysimons I
mean if we have a LILCO representative we're saying --
2 presumably a LILCO representative isn't going to be speaking 3
on his or her own without some advice from LILCO officials.
The. nuclear engineers, we did not put any of this in.
The l
d 5
Suffolk County Executive was not taking part as far as I 6
know in the drill.
It Was somebody who was standing in for
/
them, and we didn't feel that this information would affect 8
the responses to the question.
9 Q
Moving on ---
10 A
In the focus groups, as you know, where we did 11 ask people in detail whether or not -- how they would react i
12 to statements from people such as Dr. Brill who did appear j
13 at the drill and other nuclear scientists, and we would talk 14 about that if you would like.
15 0
Actually right now why don't we continue to look 16 at the EBS message, and I'm wondering whether the statement 17
" parents should not drive to school to meet their children, 18 is one that you left out of your question because you 19 thought it was confusing?
20 A
We thought that question was very confusing, 21 that part of it because it said that the schools should 22 remain closed in the first EBS message.
It Fays " Schools i
23 should remain closed," and then you say " Parents should not 24 drive to school to meet their children."
25 Well, people in the focus g; coups picked up on I
U
71200101 3818 I
marysimons i
I this confusing aspect of these EBS messages.
Are the 1
2 schools closed'or are they not closed?
If they are. closed, 3
why do parents have to drive to school to -- why do parents d
have to be told not to drive to school to meet their.
5 children.
We felt'that it was confusing.
d 6
Q So you did leave out that sentence because you i
7 were concerned that if you had given the information about' l
l 8
schools remaining closed in the first EBS message in' your' question'and then told parents not to drive to school to 10 meet their children in the second question that it would 11 confuse people?
12 A
Yes, and it was unnecessary also.
It was 13 redundant.
)
l ld
-Q Why was it unnecessary?
j l
l 1
15 A
Because we had told them that in the first i
16 scenario?
l 17 0
What did you tell them in the first scenario?
18 A
That schools with the 10-mile emergency planning 19 zone should remain closed.
20 0
So your view is that when you asked them 1
21 Question 13, having heard Question 12 they would carry 22 forward to Question 13 the information that schools had been 23 closed and therefore need not have any further information 24 about what the schools were doing or what people should do 25 to get their children?
Is that what your view is?
Is that I
71200101-3819 marysimons i
right?
2 A
Give me a second'to think about it.
3 Q
- Okay, d
A Yes, we felt that there was a significant.
I 5
confusion as'to whether the schools were closed or not.
6 closed, and there was a difference between the first EBS 7
message and the second EBS message and that it wasn't clear 8
as to whether the schools were closed or not closed.
That 9
is why we left it out.
1 10 Q
And then again there is further information in l
I 4
11 EBS Message No. 2 about the brochure, and you determined not 12 to put the information about the brochure in any of your l
.1 13 questions because the brochure hadn't been handed out,and j
i 14 you thought that that would confuse questionnaire is respondents?
i 16 A
Yes.
17 Q
EBS Message No. 2 describes the emergency 1
18 planning zone by bounded streets, doesn't it?
)
l 19 A
Yes.
20 0
And you left that out of your Question No. 13, l
21 too, didn't you?
22 A
Yes.
23 0
Is that another paragraph that you thought was 24 confusing?
25 A
No.
We felt that that was not confusing. That
?
J:
71200101 3820 marysimons i
I was left out because we just had to have these of a certain 2
length and we could not have them too long, and we felt that 3
most people knew whether or not they were in the zone or outside the zone and that putting this in wouldn't affect d
l 5
significantly_the results.
6 0
so it was the constraints of the questionnaire 7
that had you shorten the questions in part?
8 A
Oh, yes, yes.
I said that we had to make these 9
questions of a certain length.
They could not be so long that people could not follow them.
People can't listen to a l 10 t
15-minute speech on the telephone.
~
12 g
Especially not just once, right?
l 13 A
Right.
14 Q
Now you just said that it's your view that most 15 people know whether they live in the emergency planning zone 16 or not; is that right?
17 A
Most people we felt would know, yes.
Ia Q
How would they know?
l 19 A
They know how far away they are from Shoreham.
20 0
How do they know that?
21 A
They know where they live and ther know where 22 the plant is.
23 0
Would they also know what zones they're in?
1 24 A
No.
To my knowledge, nobody knows what zones i
25 they're in.
Nobody has received any information on that.
I i
4 i
I 1
m-_--_
h:
i 71200101 3821 marysimons l
1 The people that we had in the focus groups thought these 2
zones -- they didn't know what zones they were in and they 3
also were very skeptical of all of these zones.
They 4
thought the idea of having these zones was ridiculous.
5 Q
Professor Saegert, do you agree that most people 6
know whether they live within the 10-mile emergency planning 7
zone or not?
8 A
(Witness Saegert)
I think they would know I
9 whether they are roughly within 10 miles of the Shoreham 10 plant, and I think that Professor Cole's estimate is Il probably accurate that any more information that was 1
12 entirely hypothetical would be confusing people rather than l
i i
13 helpful in any way.
I I
14 l
0 And for a real emergency is it your view that in 15 a real emergency people would still tend to know whether 16 they were inside the 10-mile zone or not?
17 A
Tend to know and tend to regard it is a la fictional, irrelevant boundary which Dr. Cole's survey indicated was very clear in the focus groups.
19 20 Q
would you turn to Question 14 on page 55 of your 21 4.
22 JUDGE FRYE:
Are you moving on to a new ---
23 MS. McCLESKEY:
A new question.
Would you like 24 to take a break?
25 JUDGE FRYE:
Why don't we take our break.
71200101 3822 marysimons I
MS. McCLESKEY:
That's fine.
2 (Recess taken from 10:07 to 10:25 a.m.)
i 3
4 5
6 7
8 i
I i
9 10 11
~
l 12 13 14 t
15 l
l 16 j
i i
17 l
l l
18 l
l 1
t 1
l I
i 20
]
21 1
22 I
l 23 24 l
25
___________________JL
i 71200202-3823 joswalsh
]
1 JUDGE FRYE:
Can-we-go back on the record, 2
please?
4 3
BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing) 4 j
Q Mr. Cole, would you please turn to Page 55 of 5
J your Attachment 14 --
6 A
(Witness Cole)
Yes.
.j I
l 0
-- to Question 14?
Do you have it?
l 8
A Yes.
9 i
i 0
And,-would you read that question into the 10 record as you would for the survey?
12
- Suppose that at 10:30 a.m. you heard on the -
A radio that at 9:39 a.m. a general emergency condition was 13 declared at the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station, a LILCO id representative said that there had been a failure in plant i
is safety systems and recommended evacuation for all people 16 living in the 10-mile evacuation zone except those people 17 who live south of the Long Island Expressway.and east of the
)
William Floyd Parkway.
LILCO said that people who were; told 19 to evacuate would be safer if they left as soon as 20 l
possible.
The LILCO representative said.that if you are 21 outside the 10-mile zone there is no reason to take any 22 action.
He repeated once again that the Shoreham Nuclear
- i l
23 I
Power Station is in a general emergency condition and that 24 there had been a release of radiation into the air.
When 25 you heard this message on the radio, would you and members l
l l'
N
_ _ L
I 71200202 3824 joewalsh
-i 1
of your family go about your normal business or stay.inside your home or leave your home and go further away from the plant.
JUDGE FRYE:
Let me ask a question, Dr. Cole.
When you asked these three questions, I'm curious as to whether you read all three questions and then get the 7
response or you read the first question and see if there is a
a response to that before going to the second?
WITNESS COLE:
Yes.
We read the first question, 12, to everybody, all the --
l JUDGE FRYE:
No, no.
I'm talking about at the end of each one of the 1, 2, 3, the choices --
13 l
WITNESS COLE:
The choices, yes.
We read all of l
them.
15 JUDGE FRYE:
You read all of them?
I 16 l
WITNESS COLE:
Oh, yes.
Yes.
JUDGE FRYE:
I see.
I BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing) 19 i
Q Now, Question Number 14 corresponds to EBS 20
{
Message Number 5; is that right?
i 21 l
A (Witness Cole)
Yes.
i l
22 3
Q And, EBS Message Number 5 is about seven pages l
23
)
long, isn't it?
24 A
Yes.
25 Q
Could you turn to that in your Attachment 8, i
l d
1 71200202 3825'
- joewalsh h
1 1:
- please?
I 2
l A
Yes.
1 3
Q Now,.your Question Number 14.te11s people.that there has been a general emergency at 9:39 a.m, right?
A'-
Yes.
6 Q
And that there'is a LILCO representative ~giving information?
i 8
l A
Yes.
9 Q
And that the LILCO representative says that j
there has been a failure-in the plant safety systems?-
A Yes.
Q And that evacuation is recommended by the'LILCO 13 representative of a11' people-in the 10-mile zone, right?
)
1 A
All people except those who are south of the 15 Long Island Expressway and east of'the William Floyd
)
16 j
Parkway.
17 l
0 Right.
Thank you.
Jmd, after the definition of 18 who is to evacuate, your question gives them-the information 19 that LILCO says leave as soon as possible because you will be safer if you do?
21 A
Yes.
22 t
Q And that LILCO says that if you live.outside the 23 10-mile zone there is no need to take any action?
24 A-Yes.
25 Q
And, then you repeat in your question that the
-_____-___A
71200202 3826 joewalsh i
i LILCO representative has said that Shoreham is in a general I
emergency and that there has been a release of radiation into the air, right?
j A
Yes.
5 Q
Why did you repeat that information in this question and not repeat information in the other questions?
)
7 i
A Well, because this question actually asks people 1
8 to evacuate.
This was the first EBS message that people were advised to evacuate.
10 The other ones just said a minor release and it j
said people did not have to evacuate.
So, we felt that -that was a very important part of this message.
l 13 l
LILCO was advising people to evacuate because l
radiation had been released and presumably LILCO wanted 15 those people to evacuate and that this piece of information I
16 i
I would make sure that people complied with LILCO's recommendai. ions.
l 18 0
You repeated the information because it was important and you thought it was more likely people would
,0 2
comply if you repeated the information; is that right?
A We thought that it was -- that this was important information in this particular EBS message because people had been asked to evacuate as a result of the radiation release.
So, now apparently in this scenario a significant amount of radiation had been released, enough 4
.n 4
71200202 3827 jo3walsh j
1 for LILCO to recommend a very substantial number of people j
evacuate the EPZ and, therefore, it was an important part.
Whereas, before the whole tone of the meseage, 4
I l
the prior messages, was that the -- either no radiation had 5
been released or that it was not imminent or that it was 6
only a very minor release and that nothing had to be done.
j 1
7 l
l That's the difference between the two.
l a
l 0
So, you repeated the information to highlight 9
the information?
10 A
Because we felt that it was important in this message, yes.
12 Q
Now, EBS Number 5 has a lot of the same 13 information that we talked about in 1 and 2, isn't that l
14 right?
I is A
Yes.
16
)
Q And, that includes the description of the EBS 17 l
system, isn't that right?
l 18 l
l A
Yes.
i 19 l
0 And, the indication of a general emergency being 20 one of four emergency classifications?
21 A
Yes.
I 22 0
And the description of the Local Emergency 23 Response Organization and what it was doing?
24 A
Yes.
25 0
And the consulting activities by the Director?
J 4
1 71200202 3828
__ jogwalsh i
1-l
]
A Yes.
4 0'
And, those are all' items that, as with the other 3
questions, you left out of Question 14,.right?
A Yes, for the same reason, because they either' i
5 j
were confusing in the sense that people wouldn't know what they were or that they weren't essential pieces of 7
information.
8 l
Q Okay.
The question that you asked people to i
answer was after hearing this information whether they would go about their normal business or stay inside their home or leave their;home and go further away from the plant, right?
12 A
Yes.
13 0
And, it's your view that they don't need 14
)
i information about any emergency response organization in I
is order to decide whether they would go about their normal l
16 j
business or stay inside their home or leave their home and go further away from the plant, right?
A I don't think that any of the information that 19 was in this EBS message that was not included in this question would effect a response to the question.
l 21 22 23 24 25 l
{1
?;
L--___________.
1:
l 71200303 3829 cuswalsh i
1 d
0 Later on in EBS Message Number 5, there were 2
I additional items that I don't believe appeared in 1 and 2, 3
i and one set of that is statements that conditions may change i
a i
and that recommendations may change and that you will be informed immediately of any change in recommendations.
6 Do you see that in EBS Number 57
?
A (Witness Cole)
If you could point out on what I
8
{
page it is, it might speed up things.
9 1
0 Yes.
That's the last paragraph of the last page 1
to 1
of the message, and the top of the page says Attachment 4, l
11 Page 41 of 47.
But, there is no specific page number on.it.
l 12 1
Do you have it?
13 A
Yes.
Are you talking about the last paragraph?
14 Q
Right.
A Yes.
l
'6 Q
And, that last paragraph says that -- it tells 17 l
people that new information may be available, doesn't it?
A Yes.
19 i
O And, that this message may be changed if new 20 information is available, right?
I 21 A
Yes.
22 Q
And that they will be informed of any change, 23 right?
24 l
A Yes.
25 Q
And, it's your view that that's not information lI
.i
71200303 3830 tu;walsh I
i that's needed to answer the question about whether you would i
1 go about your normal business or stay inside your home or 3
leave your home and go further away from the plant?
i A
No.
I think that's not necessary at all.
j 5
j Q
Okay.
Turning back in EBS Message Number 5 to 6
i the fifth page of it which is labeled Page 39 of 47 --
j 7
A
- Yes, j
8
)
i O
Do you have that?
A Yes.
Q There is an additional new piece of information g
i that wasn't, in the other two EBS messages that you dealt -
l with in your questions, and that is the information that traffic guides will be along routes and that you will be directed along evacuation routes, and that evacuation routes 15 exist.
l 16
{
Is it your view that that information would not 17 j
have effected the respondents' answer about whether they I
would go about their normal business or stay inside their l
19 home or leave their home and go further away from the plant?
i 1
20 A
Yes.
I'm sure that it wouldn't.
In the focus 21 I
groups, people thought, the whole notion of traffic guides was absurd.
23 0
So, your elimination of that information from Question 14 was based on the data you gathered in your focus groups?
T L_____._______._
5
71200303 3831 cu;walsh 1
A Ch, no.
The focus groups were all'done after 2
I the. survey was completed.
The questions were formulated by j
3 trying to get all of the necessary information, all the I
4 e
important information, in these EBS messages in here as much as we possibly could in as precise -- in the language which l
6 is as close to the original as possible.
We then conducted pre-tests and we found out how
]
8 l
long we could have these things without people getting J
9 annoyed on the telephone.
And, I think that we have as much 10 l
in these messages as you can have.
1 11 1
And, all the information that was deleted I 12 i
don't think would have had any substantive effect on the i
13 I
results.
i l
1d l
Q Would you please turn to Question 15 on Page 55
{
l 15 through 56 of your Attachment 147 16 A
Yes.
I O
And, would you please read that question into the record?
19 A
At around 1 p.m., you heard the following message broadcast over the radio:
A general emergency was 21 declared at 9:39 a.m. today at the Shoreham Nuclear Power 22 Station.
A major release of radiation into the air occurred 23 at 12 p.m.
Based on measurements of radiation, the thyroid 24 dose is expected to be 400 percent of the U. S.
25 Environmental Protection Agency evacuation guidelines at two I'
-b
71200303 3832 cu walsh l
I 1
miles, 100 percent at five miles, and 40 percent at 10 miles downwind of Shoreham.
A LILCO representative recommends evacuation for people in the entire 10-mile emergency P anning zone.
People in this zone will be safer if they l
5 l
evacuate as soon as possible away from Shoreham.
The LILCO 6
representative said that if you live outside the 10-mile emergency planning zone, there is no reason to take.any action.
Once again, the bhoreham Nuclear Power Station is in a general emergency condition.
There has been a release of radiation into the air.
When you heard this message on g
the radio, would you and members of your family go about_
your normal business or stay inside your home or leave your home and go further away from the plant?
l 0
And, EBS Message Number 7 corresponds to Question 15; is that right?
16 I
A Yes.
I 17 Q
EBS Number 7 is about four and a half page long, j
right?
19 A
Excuse me.
I'm just locating it.
l 20 Q
Oh, that's all right.
Sorry.
(The witness is looking at a document.)
i 22 i,
l A
Yes.
I 23 l
l Q
And, in addition to the information that we have i
l-24 j
already discussed with the other three questions that was 25 I
deleted, I notice that you deleted the information that the ll 4
A:
71200303 3833 suswalsh.
1 l
percentages that you listed in the question are based on the-
]
2 l
five rem child. thyroid evacuation PAGs.
L A
Yes.
l 4
l Q
Did you delete that information because you 5
l thought it would be confusing?
6 l
A Yes, we did.
And, I might.say that I. felt that i
7
\\
this message was particularly hard. to put into a question,:
8 l
because I felt that the whole message was confusing and i
9 frightening.
10 And, even some of the material that we have in 11 I
this message I'm sure was confusing to respondents who don't 12 understand thyroid doses and environmental protection 13 evacuation, Protection Agency guidelines.
14 I would also like to point out that the responses to this question don't make much difference to my testimony because the overwhelming majority of people 17 already said that they would. evacuate prior to being read 18 this question.
So, the great bulk of people would have 19 cvacuated or attempted to evacuate before this message was 20 read at 1 p.m.
21 Q
Right.
And, I'n. correct, aren't I, that.if a 22 person responded to Question 12 that they would evacuate 23 that they were not read. Questions 13, 14 and.157 24 A
Yes.
25 0
And, then if they responded to 12 that they i.
E
71200303 3834 cu;walsh I
1 wouldn't but -- and I guess if they either gave the answer, stay home or go about their normal business, then they were read the next question?
A Yes.
5 Q
So, by the time you got to Question 15 you were left 71th only those die-hards who had not responded previously that they would evacuate?
A That's correct.
About 23 percent of the sample.
Q Okay.
Now, you say that you have confusing information included in your Question 15.
Could you I
identify that for us?
A I think that this information that is here is 13 hard for people to understand.
When you talk about thyroid doses and you say it's expected to be 400 percent of the l
l U.S. Environmental Protection Agency evacuation guidelines at two miles, when we played this message to the people in the focus groups they thought it was all jargon and double-talk and they didn't know what it meant.
19 And, it wasn't explained.
I think that if this kind of information is to be conveyed to the public its l
21 meaning has to be espn %ed to the public in terms that the public can understanu And, the public doesn't understand l
thyroid doses, EPA guidelines.
It doesn't understand these l
2a percentages and the different distances.
So, we were faced with a very difficult problem l
w 1
71200303 3835 suewalsh I
here.
We wanted to include this message, the one that 2
called for evacuation of the entire zone but.the material in 1 3
the message.we felt was so complex, so filled with jargon L
d and so confusing that 'it.was hard for us to eliminate all of 5
it.
6 And, our question probably was_ confusing,;too.
I 7
j Q-When you read that Question Number 15, did i
8 l
anyone comment to your questioner
_that it was confusing?
A I don't have that information.
10 Q
Would someone have mentioned it to you if'they were getting responses that one of your questions was 12 confusing, do you think?
3 13 A
Well, we would have picked it up in the pre-14
- test, f
u O
Did you?
16 A
Not too many people said that it was confusing.
17 I
But, as I pointed out at that time.you already only had 18 about 20 percent of the respondents who were listening to 19 that question.
And, most of those people-just didn't care 20 what the question said; they weren't going to evacuate under j
21 any circumstances, including some people who lived in the O
~
22 EPZ who should have evacuated.
!1 23
[
Q Do you know that the people who were left for 24 Question 15 were the sorts of people who-wouldn't have 25 cvacuated under any circumstances because they told you that l
l n
A'
'71200303 3836 sucwalsh' i-1 in response to your' questionnaire?
A' No.
These.are people who'just s' aid that.they wouldn't evacuate after' hearing all'of these scenarios..
It's' just myf assumption.
I don't have -any.hard data 'on that.
.6 Q~
Okay.-
JUDGE PARIS:
May I ask a question right here?~-
MS. MC CLESKEY:
Sure.
9 JUDG" PARIS. Out of the'23 percent remaining, did more of them say they would stay than in your earlier questions?,
WITNESS COLE:
Oh, yeah, almost all of-them.
13 Once you get up to this scenario, the one -- this EBS'
. i 14 l
message, the one that went out at 1.p.m.,
if they hadn't left by then they were very unlikely to leave.
JUDGE PARIS:
I see.
WITNESS (.; OLE:
What we:found in general was that if people were going to leave they left early, so that 50 some odd percent, I think 53 percent'of everybody.on Long-Island.left at 7 a.m.. And, then:at-the next message, we found 69 percent were attempting.to leave.
So, most of the people who were going to-leave left early.
And,-then the people who didn't-leave early were unlikely to. leave --
JUDGE PARIS:
Regardless of what happened.
i i
i
_ ~... - - - - - - -
E-
-l 1
71200303 3837 cuewalsh 1
4 WITNESS COLE:
-- regardless of what happened, i
2 yeah.
And, some of these people'were in the EPZ.
3 i
And, actually I think 13 percent of families in l
l d
the EPZ who were-advised to evacuate said that they wouldn't
'l 5
evacuate,.about 4,000 families.
6 JUDGE FRYE:
Of your sample?
About 13 percent 7
I of your sample?
8
'l WITNESS COLE:
13 percent of our sample.
- And, l
then the 4,000 is made-on a projection.
We just take 13-1 10
)
percent of all of the households in the EPZ and' assuming our sample is representative that would come.out to be 12 approximately 4,000 families who were told to evacuate who 13 wouldn't.
14 JUDGE FRYE:
When you speak in terms of a 15 certain percentage of your sample.that indicated they would 16 evacuate after the first EBS message and another percentage indicate they would aftc.: the second EBS message, is that l
percentage -- is the second percentage a percentage of the l
total sample or a percentage of those remaining who had said after the first EBS message that they would stay put?
l 21 WITNESS' COLE:
It's a cumulative percentage.
22 i
i JUDGE FRYE:
It's a cumulative --
i 23 I j WITNESS COLE:
Yeah.
At each point, we would.
24 add up the total proportion of people who would have started to evacuate.
l l
i
'71200303 3838 cuswalsh i.
I So, after the first one, 53; and, after the second one, a total of 69, meaning 53 would have started and-then an additional 16 or whate" JUDGE FRYE:
167 5
WITNESS COLE:
Yeah.
I'm not sure of the 6
precise numbers, but.that's essentially --
7 JUDGE FRYE:
Well, that answers my. question.
WITNESS COLE: -Yeah.
l BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing) 10 l
O Professor Cole, when we turned to EBS Message Number, you said that you found it frightening.
Could yau please go through it and tell me which parts of it are frightening?
A Are you asking me which part I found frightening l
15 t
l er which part people in the focus groups found frightening I
f 16 or which part I think that people in general would find l
17 frightening?
j l
I mean, I have been dealing with this so long l
19 l
that I myself don't find any of this frightening.
(Laughter.)
Q That's good.
You have been educated.
i 22 l
A Right.
Right.
23 Q
Right.
A I'm not frightened, but I know that the -- I was very surprised actually at the level of anxiety and fear of-I i
} )
d.
71200303 3839
- uewalsh i
these people in the focus groups, normal Long Island residents.
3 And, when they heard these messages they started a
to sweat.
And, they were really afraid, you know.
It was 5
amazing to me.
I knew that people would react, but I didn't 6
I know how much anxiety and fear would be generated by just 7
hearing these messages.
8 l
And, in a real emergency, I think it 'would be much greater.
10 0
Well, your question to me was.what did i cnaa by frightening.
And, let me refine my question to you a bit in 12 response to your question.
{
13 You said, when we turned to EBS Message Number l
)
7, that you thought it was frightening.
And, I now l
15 understand that you personally do not find it frightening.
l 36 A
Oh, no.
17 Q
But that you were making a statement about your 18 l
judgment of what other people would find it..And, I also 19 take it from your answer that you are basing that.somewhat 20 on your expertise and somewhat on your data from your focus 21 groups.
22 Could you first go through and tell me, based on 23 your experience as a survey researcher, which portions of~
24 i
EBS Message Number 7 you think people would find a
25 frightening?
'$ i
71200303 3840 I
sucwalsh
-t 1
A I can't -- there isn't any' specific evidence that I can give you that a particular phrase'or sentence in here is going to be found frightening based upon my.-
experience as a survey researcher.
I can say two things.
The first is that the I
overwhelming. majority of people who have heard these messages said that.they would leave.. And, I presume from l
that that they must have been frightened'or else they I
9 wouldn't have left.
I 10 And, two, I could tell you'about the focus groups if you like, in which people did' respond to these-
'l messages and which they were quite disturbed, frightened, anxious and angry also.
.l 14 '
q Q
So, there is no specific language in EBS Number 15 7 that you would characterize as frightening or that 16 specifically frightened your focus groups?
A Yes.
There is specific language.
I would be l
l 18 happy to go through it.
But, it's my opinion that it's l
19 frightening.
i 20 t
i 0
That's fine.
That's why you are here, to give i
21 I
your opinion.
j A
Okay.
Fine.- At the be' ginning, when they say j
there has been a failure in plant safety systems, well, when i
people hear that there has-been a failure in plant safety systems they.immediately think that the plant is going to-l 1
71200303 3841 su walsh i
melt down and that they -- they start to think of the China 2
syndrome, Chernobal and other kinds of images that people 3
have in their heads about nuclear power.
The safety systems a
have failed; it's dangerous.
5 Then, right after it says a major release of 6
radiation.
There is now quite a bit of research -- quite a 7
1 bit of research -- that people are very, very frightened of l
8 1
any level of radiation and that they are not capable of 9
distinguishing between the real health effects of different 10 levels of radiation.
And, here they are being told a major release.
j 12 People were frightened when they were told it la wcs a very minor release, and they wanted to leave.
- And, 14 now they are being told you have a major release of 15 radiation.
Well, when the average person who does not 16 understand radiation, when they hear that a major release of
\\
radiation has occurred, they think they are going to die.
1 is t
They feel that they are going to be exposed to a lethal 19 dose.
20 And, we had lots of evidence of that in the 21 focus groups.
Many of the people felt that they were 22 doomed, that no matter what they did, whether they evacuated 23 or whether they didn't evacuate, they would either die now 24 or they would die later or they would get cancer or their 25 children would die.
People are extremely afraid.
i
i 71200303 3842 suewalsh i
I And the words, a major release of radiation, would frighten the great bulk of Long Island residents if they heard that it had been released into the air.
- And, then they start to hear this other information which they I
don't really understand too well.
Based on measurements of radiation, the thyroid 7
dose.
Well, you know, they don't really quite understand 8
what that is, but it's expected to be 400 percent.
- Well, that sounds like a lot, a lot, to them.
And, that would ic confirm their initial fear that a major release of radiation was going to be very damaging to their health.
And, then the message goes on to talk about 13 distances.
Well, people -- one thing which was very clear from the focus groups and has been clear in other research, 15 including some research done by Lindell and Barnes, that people don't understand how fast radiation travels.
They don't understand at all what the relationship is between I
distance from the source and risk.
19 And, people feel that radiation travels very quickly and long distances.
Now, they have probably 1
21 i
erroneous beliefs on these things.
But, nonetheless these are very real beliefs.
23 So, as soon as somebody hears that there has been a major release of radiation, 400 percent of U.S. EPA guideline's has been released at two miles, they feel that it l
l l
---___x
l l
71200303 3843 ruswalsh 1
is going to spread all over the Island and that it's going 2
to immediately affect them and that they are going to be at 3
risk even if they are a long way away from that plant.
4 For example, Lindell and Barnes found in their 5
survey conducted in Washington that more than half of the 6
sample felt that they had to be 40 miles away or more from 7
the source of the radiation leak and the power plant in order to be safe.
So, people have these perceptions that 9
the radiation just spreads and very quickly.
They don't 10 understand the time either.
11 The 5 rem thing that we left out of our 12 question, we felt that people wouldn't understand what that 13 l
was.
14 l
Q Do you think that's frightening infor'eation in 15 this message?
16 A
I think it can be in the context of the rest of 17 the message.
When people start to hear ~these technical 18 terms, they -- and they hear that a major release has 19 occurred and it's more than what the EPA says should be, 20 they are afraid.
And, all of these technical terms I don't 21 think reassures them.
22 23 24 I
2$
1 r
71200404 3844 jo:walsh l
I L
i 0
What specifically in the EBS do you find 2
frightening?
3 A
Well again, as soon as people hear that d
evacuation is recommended, it is on Page 2 of my copy, as 5
soon as people hear that evacuation is recommended for 6
people in the entire ten mile emergency planning zone, then 7
the people in these zones will be safer if they evacuate as l
8 soon as possible.
The term, 'as soon as possible' indicate to the 10 average citizen that there is a very real danger, and that 11 it is important to do something quickly and also if they I
12 have to evacuate as soon as possible, it must be a very 13 serious release of radiation, so I think that would just Id reinforce their fears.
15 We found in the focus groups and we found also 16 in surveys that people have no belief in the ten mile EPZ as 17 a meaningful geographical boundary.
They can't understand IB how somebody on one side of the EPZ could be in danger, and
'9 somebody on the other side of that EPZ not be in danger, and 20 people repeatedly said that radiation doesn't stop at a ten 21 mile curtain.
22 There is no curtain in the air that stops the 23 radiation, so we found that most people feel the EPZ is a 2d fiction, and they don't feel that they are safe outside the 25 EPZ.
l l
l i
l
71200404 3845
.joswalsh 1
In' fact, we had a question on the survey in 2
which we asked people whether or not they would believe'they 3
would be safe outside the EPZ, and the overwhelming majority 4
said that they wouldn't.
5 When you talk about milk-producing animals 6
having to be moved into shelters and placed on stored feed, 7
that adds to the fear, and it did in the earlier scenario --
a in the earlier EBS -- I think it was No. 2, that they 9
started to advise sheltering to animals.
They feel if 10 animals ' are in danger, then humans are in danger.
11 And the bottom of this, when it says, 'before
~
12 you' leave your home or business, make sure you have closed 13 all windows and doors and turned off all appliances, 14 extinguished any fires, and closed fire place dampers, lock 15 all doors when you leave, take blankets and pillows with you l
16 for your own use and any medication that you regularly take, 17 you could be away for several days,' this is definitely 18
- scary, 19 People feel that they might never be able to 20 come back to their homes.
This was expressed by lots of 21 people in the focus groups, thc.t once and accident occurred, 22 Long Island would be contaminated permanently, and they l
23 wouldn't be able to come back.
They would just be driven 24 off.
25 And when they hear they have to take all these
____.___.__.m--_
1 i
l 71200404 3846 joswalsh,
l I
things and lock everything up, their notion of how dangerous
~
2 the incident is gets exaggerated.
3 Q
I am'sorry.
Professor Cole, I am:not sure'I' d
understand the last thing you just said.
You think that as 1
5 a result of telling people to leave'their homes and lock 6
everything up, that they'will exaggerate the danger from a 7
major release.at Shoreham in an accident?
8 A
I think that most people when-they hear this 9
l will believe that they are in much more serious. risk than 10 nuclear scientists'would believe that they were.in.
.)
That the average citizen, when they heard this
~
12 message, wob1d believe that their life was threatened.
Even 13 somebody who lived a good distance away'from the plant i
14 outside the EPZ.
When they heard this message, they would 15 believe that enough radiation had been released so that
.l their life was in danger, or else LILCO wouldn't be telling
]
16 17 people to leave, they wouldn't be telling them to put 18 animals indcors, they wouldn't be telling people to take 19 medications and to lock windows, and then when all of these 20 things are said, people come to.the conclusion that so much 21 radiation has been released, that I am gcing to suffer--
22 medically.
23 Either die, or bec'ome ill, or my children will 24 become ill.
I think that is essentially it.
25 Q
Thank you very much.
Now, throughout our l
3 i,
U 1
1 I
l 71200404 3847 l
jo walsh 1
1 discussion of questions 12 through 15, you identified i
2 certain information in the-EBS messages that you l
3 characterized as, ' confusing.'
Who made the judgment that t
d certain information in the EBS messages was confusing, and 5
would not be put into the survey?
6 A
You mean like the term, ' Director of Local
[
l l
7 Response?'
i 8
Q Right.
i 9
A That was primarily my judgment.
I 10 0
So, you detarmined'before the questions were 11 written and while yot were writing the questions, what 12 information'you would leave out because it was confusing?
13 A
My job as a survey researcher is to write the 14 most intelligible questionnaire.
One that would be l
15 understood the easiest, and yet get the necessary l
16 information.
17 In this task, we had a very specific event that 3
18 we wanted information on.
We had an exercise with very i
19 specific EBS messages, and we wanted to find out if that 20 actually happened, what would people do?
That was the task.
21 But yet, the EBS messages were very long, and-filled with a lot of jar'on, filled with a lot of technical 22 g
23 terms, filled with a lot of terms that people, I. felt, would 24 not understand and therefore my job Was to take those EBS l
I i
25 messages and write questions which were as true to the EBS I
4 1:
j 71200404;
.3848 i
joswalsh I.
I
'I mossages as we could possible make them,'would really-2 represent the situation, and leave out either unnecessary, i
3 repetitive, confusing, information and I think we succeeded l
in doing. that.
j d
5 Q
Could you give me just a couple.ofLexamples of 6
information that you thought was unnecessary?
7
.A The-brochures.
The brochures is"a. totally 8
unnecessary thing, because nobody has the brochures.
People-l.
outside'the EPZ, which represent the bulk of.the'peopleLwe-10 interviewed, are never. supposed to get the brochures.
y People inside the EPZ. don't'have the brochures.
If you start to talk to people about' brochures that theyI 12 13 don't have, they are going to think that you are in some Id sort of fairy land, a make believe. land,-and they won't is understand what you are talking about.
16 You have to try to make-these questions.be 17 intelligible, and to talk about brochures that don't exist 18 and that people have never received, would definitely.be 19 confusing.
20 Q
And then I take it from your responses this-21 morning that your focus group data bore.out some of the 22 judgments thatLyou made.about confusion.in the EBS Messages?
23 A
Yes, yes.
When'we played the -- in the focus 24 groups, we did play, as I recall, the message verbatim.
We-l 25 may have left out the thing about the Suffolk County.
l l
l
'I 1
l' l
1 1
.5) 3-
+
71200404 3849 isawalsh.
1 1-Executive, but other than that, we played the messages 2
verbatim as they were given to us, and found that people 3
didn't understand a lot of these terms, and there are lots d
and lots of quotes in my testimony and the testimony. of my 5
colleagues that show that-people refer.to those messages as
.6 being in code, as1some sort of double talk, as jargon, that 7
people didn't understand these messages.
I a
Even the people who are pro-LILCO,. pro-Shoreham, 9
and wouldn't evacuate, agree that the messages were 10 unclear.
And some people said the messages'were so unclear n.
that they didn't believe that they were real' messages.
~
12
- They said they could not believe that in this 13 day and age, with communication science advanced as it is, 14 that these could be real messages, and that they.were fake.
i is 0
Why didn't you do the focus groups before your i
16 questionnaire?
17 A
We needed the information from the 1
18 questionnaire.
We had to have this information.
We had to i
19 know how people would actually react to this scenario.
So, -
20 we had to have that information.
It was not clear at the I
21 time whether or not there would be enough funds to conduct 22 any additional research.
There was other research which 23 would have been useful to conduct, but this was an absolute I
(
2d essential, we felt.
~
25 We had to know how people would respond to~these r
____-_-_2
I i
71200404 3850 I
f;cwalsh i
i 1
EBS messages, and we had to have a random sample so that we 2
could generalize the population of Long Island.
3 So, this was a first thing.
We had to do it.
L d
There is a lot of other research that we could have done, 5
and I think the focus groups were extremely useful, and it 6
turned out we did have the funds to do that, so we Were able 7
to do that later.
/
8 Q
Now, Professor Cole, you are aware that on the 9
day of the exercise, and according to the plan, the 10 simulated EBS messages would have been repeated every fifteen minutes?
12 A
'Yes.
13 Q
Okay.
And you can't do that sort of repetition l
l
~
Id in telephone poll obvious]y, right?
15 A
Right.
I
}
16 Q
And in addition to EBS messages 1, 2, 5, and 7, I
17 which we have discussed in the context of your Questions 12
{
18 through 15, LILCO simulated broadcast of EBS Messages 3, 4, l
19 6, 8, 8.1, 9, and 9.1, right?
20 A
Could you repeat that question?
21 Q
Sure.
In addition to the EBS messages that we 22 have talked about, that you took into account in your 23 questions, which were numbers 1, 2, 5, and 7.
24 A
Yes.
25 Q
LILCO simulated on the day of the exercise, and l
i
71200404 3851
.i
.joswalsh i
~
ll 1
you have attached lto your. testimony, EBS Messages 3, 4, 6,
.o 2
8,.8.1, 9, and 9.1, right?
I 3
A Yes.'
Can:I add something?
l d
Q Sure.
5
.A' In the focus groups, in'the first. focus group, 6
being aware that it'is part of LILCO's. argument that the 7
repetition of.these messages is meaningful, we played the 8
messages twice.
We played the message once, and then we 9
' stopped and played.the message.again, but it became very 10 clear there that it was totally unnecessary.
That the 11 people, when they listened to the message: absorbed it, and 12 that we wer'e just taking up a lot of time, and we did noE 13 have to play the messages over again.
p 14 Q
Okay.
And in Questions ~12 through 15, you tell 15
.the respondent that people outside the 10 mile zon~e have l
been told there is no reason.to take any action, right?
16 17 A
- Yes, 18 0
Okay.
And then you ask the respondents whether i
they would go about their normal business or stay inside or 19 20 leave as a result of the.information they have. heard in 'your !
21 question, right?
22 A-Yes.
23 0
But you don't tell the respondents in-Questions
{
24 12 through 15 whether they should assume-they are inside or 25 outside the EPZ, do you?
i I
l I
i o _-
i
l 71200404 3852 jonwalsh i
l l
1 A
Whether they should assume?
No.
We -- they l
l 2
assume that they are where they are.
3 Q
How do you know that?
1 d
A Because we say assume that you are at home on a j
weekday morning.
So, if you are in Setauket, then you are 5
6 in Setauket.
What would you do when you hear this, which is 7
the only thing to do to make sense.
You cant ask people to a
assume that they live somewhere else, and then ask them what i
9 they would do.
l 10 Question 12, suppose that you were at home on a I
weekday morning and you woke up at 7 a.m., and turned on the 12 radio.
So,'by saying that you were at home, we are telling 13 them to assume that they are living in the place that is l
l 1
Id their home.
)
15 Q
And it is your view that that assumption would j
i
'6 have carried through for 13, 14, 15, 167 17 A
Yes.
is Q
Okay.
And you don't give people any information l
19 in these questions about whether they live inside or outside 20 the EPZ, because you assume that they would know that, l
i 21 right?
That is what you said before?
I 22 A
We assume that most people would know it.
We do 23 not assume that everybody would know it.
But we assume that 24 the situation will be fairly similar on a real accident.
25 0
You assume that most people will know whether 6
J.
l L
71200404 3853 joswalsh I
they live in or out of the EPZ, right?
l 2
A Right.
Certainly people in Nassau County, for i
3 example, the great bulk of them know that they are not in j
4 the EPZ.
5 0
And you assume that there are going to be some 6
people answering your questions who won't know whether they 7
are in or out of the EPZ?
8 A
There are some people who don't know.
And who 9
won't know when you read your EBS messages, even with your 10 description.
There were some people in the focus groups who il did not even believe the definition of the ten mile zone.
~
12 They said, "I don't believe that Sunrise Highway is only ten 13 miles away from the plant.'
14 There is no question, no matter how you l
15 described that EPZ, unless you give street addresses, that l
16 there will be some people who are in the EPZ who will 17 believe they are out, and there will be many more people who l
18 are out of the EPZ who believe that they are in.
i 19 Q
So, you think there are many people who don't i
20 know whether they are in or out of the EPZ?
21 A
Not a lot if you look at all of Long Island.
If 22 you look at all of Long Island, there are relatively few.
l 23 If you look at people who are on the borders of the EPZ, 24 then there are a lot more, of course.
l l
25 For the whole population, I would say that there I
i
.l a
71200404 3854 jor,walsh j
are relatively few.
We probably could get some statistics
)
I 1
2 J
on that from past surveys.
I am sure that we have:that 3
information somewhere.
d Q
.And when you told people to assume that they 5
were at home in that first Question 12, is it your view that l
6 people who went on to answer the others assumed that they
)
7 continued to stay home all day in response to the other i
8 questions?
i 9
A Yes.
10 0
-And what about their families?
What do you 11 think they assumed about where their families were in
~
12 response to"your questions?
13 A
We assumed that most of the families stayed home
~
id under such a circumstance.
)
15 Q
So, it is your view that respondents were l
l 16 assuming they were at home, and that their families were with them at home when they heard all-the messages that you
'8 described in your questions?
'9 A
Yes.
Clearly some of them wouldn't be.
You 20 can't possibly cover every possible situation that could 21 exist in a survey, but that could have created more problems 22 for LILCO.
23 If there were people, for example, who at 7 2d a.m., were outside of the EPZ working, and,they heard this 25 message on the radio and they decided to go.back into the i
-Y
r
- 71200404 3855 3
~joswalsh 1
EPZ'in order to get their family to evacuate at 7 a.m.,
'2 there would have been more cross-traffic.in the EPZ, making.
3 it more difficult to perform.the' evacuation functions.
l j
d Q
'Could you take-a look for.a minute at Questions l.
i 5
12 through 15, beginning on Page 547 J
6 A
.Yes.
7
'O And just glance through them and tell me what 8
leads you to think that people assume their families were with them when they_were listening.to your questions?
{
9 10 A
We have no precise information on.what people
]
)
11 assumed where their families were.
We don't believe that 12 that kind o'f research can be done precisely.
And everybody I
q 13 knows that there are a hundred or a 'thousand situations' that 14 people might be in when an accident occurred, and you can't
)
15 possibly cover all of those situations.
16
-So, in doing any kind of research, you have to.
i
-1 17 sort of abstract it.
You-have to say all right, we are 18 going to take a typical situation and ask people to imagine
{
i 19 that they are in that situation.
We don't try to cover j
20 every possible situation that a family might be in.
21 Q
And it is your view that the information of i
22 whether the family was home with them or'not would not I,
I change the response to whether people would go about their 23 24 normal business, stay inside their home,.or leave their home 25 and go further away?
71200404 3856 1
jo:walsh i
1 A
No.
If you wanted to do a more detailed survey, 2
you would have to ask people where your family is normally 3
at this time.
You have to get a complete enumeration of who d
was in the family, where they were.
You would have to ask I
5 them what they would do, but ultimately what it would boil 6
down to is this:
When you heard this message, would you l
7 leave?
j q
i 8
And that is what we were interested in.
We were g
interested in knowing whether they people would attempt to
'O evacuate.
11 And, we didn't think it was necessary to get all 12 the detaile'd information that might affect people who had 13 unusual circumstances.
For example, somebody who was, say,
- ~
id I working outside the EPZ heard this message and then came is back into the EPZ to get his or her family.
16 0
Now, when you put together Questions 12 through 17 15, you made some effort going through the EBS messages to
'8 eliminate information that you thought might be viewed as 19 inconsistent by the listener, right?
20 A
Yes.
21 0
So, your survey can't really serve as a measure 22 of whether there are any inconsistencies in the EBS messages 1
23 or not, can it?
2d A
The survey?
25 0
Yes, the survey, the questionnaire, I
i
________________O
~
71200404 3857 joswalsh.
1 A
You can't tell from the survey whether there'are 2
inconsistencies in the messages.
You can tell that from 3
some of the. things in the messages.that people didn't 4
understand them and weren't going to listen to them.
d 5
Q Right.
And, when you constructed your Questions-6 12 through 15, you went to some effort ---it sounds like 7
Considerable effort -- to eliminate information that you a
thought would be confusing to people; isn't that'right?
9 l
A We eliminated information we felt was confusing 10 or redundant or unnecessary, yes.
Il Q
So, the survey -- the questionnaire -- cannot be 12 used as a m'easure of whether the EBS messages were confusing 13 or not, can it?
l 14 A
No, I don't agree with that.
I mean, they don't 15 tell you specific details about whether or not there is a 16 confusing statement in EBS Number 2 about the release of 17 radiation.
We eliminated that, of course.
18 But, the messages can be used to tell you --
l I
since these have the essence of the messages in the precise
)
19 1
- o language that LILCO used, or as close to it as we can'get, 21 the fact that people said that they weren't going to'do what 22 LILCO told them indicates to me that these messages were 23 confusing to those people.
24 25 s
i E
i 71200505 3858 sucwalsh i
1 Q
Is that the sole measure of how your i
2 questionnaire tells you that EBS messages were confusing?
3 A
(Witness Cole)
The questionnaire?
'l 0
Yes.
3 A
That's thetprimary basis for my conclusion.from the questionnaire, and that is.supportedLby the' focus groups.
I g
O 30, IJjust want to make sure I have this l
straight.
It's your vie'w that the questions in the
~
l 10 questionnaire can shed light on whether the EBS messages are confusing b,ecause in response to your questions people sa.id j
they would evacuate when the question assumed that.they need-13 not?
14 A
I think that despite the fact that we cleaned up LILCO's EBS messages, that we made them substantially clearer, that we eliminated confusion, that we eliminated jargon, the fact that so many people said that they would
,g evacuate so early indicates two things.
It indicates the tremendous fear that people have of radiation and the fact that LILCO's messages were j
very unsuccessful in overcoming that fear.
They were f
unsuccessful in' convincing people who were afraid that they should stay where they were.
People didn't listen to them.
So, from that I concluded that they were confusing.
Ni t________________________...--
-l f71200505:
3859' suowalsh' 1
.0
-You conclude from your questions that the EBS 2
messages were unsuccessful;in overcoming LILCO's --' people's fear; is that.--
4 A
That's right.
5 Q
That's what you conclude?
6 A
Right.
7 Q
You conclude that despite all of the information B
that you left out of-your. question that's 'in the EBS message?
10 A
I am as sure as I can be', based upon all of:the 150 some odd surveys I've done, all of"my experience in -
12 doing survey research and doing all sorts of qualitative 13 research, that'the information left.out would have added to 14 the confusion of the respondents, that we cleaned these is messages up, that these questions are much more i
16 intelligible, clearer and understandable to the average Long-u Island resident than your 'EBS messages; and, that' if we : had -
18
- as I said before, if we could have a situation in which we-19 could have asked these same people-in a room, read your'EBS 20 messages and asked them these questions, that we would have 21 gotten essentially the~same results or even more' indication 22 of not following LILCO's protective action recommendations.-
23 Q
Well, will you agree with me that in order.to determine whether'the EBS messages were confusing,-the words 25 in the EBS messages were confusing, you would have to use ll
- 'Jl
71200505 3850 cu';walsh i
those words in your survey?
A Not necessarily.
I mean, you could take 1
3 something which is obviously confusing, which you admit is confusing like EBS Message 2 -- everybody, your witnesses, Dr. Mileti, everybody else, has admitted that there are -- I think FEMA reached this conclusion, too, if I'm not 7
mistaken, that there were confusing and inconsistent information in EDS Number 2.
l It's possaole to clean that up and still show that the cleaned up version is confusing.
O okay.
You did clean it up --
12 A
Yes.
13 Q
-- and cleared it up in your Question 13 --
A Yes.
15 0
-- right?
A
'f e s.
17 0
And, you eliminated the confusing information.
A Right.
O How do the responses to your Question 13 indicate to you that the EBS Message Number 2 is confusing?
A Well, if the EBS message was clear and l
consistent, and if you expect clear and consistent information to have people -- lead people to follow LILCO's recommendations, then you would expect to find most people saying that they would go about their normal business or l
l l
1
_ __ _- _ - _ l
4 71200505 3861 cuewalsh I
stay inside their home.
2 But, in fact, the overwhelming majority of 3
1 people said that they would leave, which must indicate that 4
the messages are confusing and inconsistent and primarily i
5 were unsuccessful in overcoming the fear.
6 I don't think there is any question that people 7
have fear of radiation.
I don't think that is being 8
debated.
The question is, are these messages -- is the 9
information that LILCO distributed over the EBS system 10 during the exercise, would this information be successful in overcoming,this fear and convincing people that they should 12 follow LILCO's advice.
13 And, what these questions show is that the --
14 these EBS messages, substantially cleaned up, still weren't 15 successful in overcoming that fear, and that the great bulk 16 of Long Island residents, if you had an accident like the 17 one depicted in your exercise, would not follow LILCO's 18 advice.
Most of them would leave before they were told to 19 leave in the EPZ; people outside the EPZ would leave; and, 20 there are even some people inside the EPZ who eventually 21 were advised to leave would not leave.
22 So, a very substantial majority of Long Island 23 residents would not follow LILCO's advice.
24 0
And, this finding that you just articulated from 25 this survey is consistent with all the other surveys you I
L, X
l.
71200505-3862 suawalsh l
1 have taken, isn't it?
2 j
A Yes.
)
)
Q Could you please turn to Question 16 in Suffolk
)
)
County Attachment 14 at Page 567 A
Yes.
Q And, would you please read that into the record
)
7
\\
as you would for a survey?
I 8
)
l A
If at 1:45 p.m. you heard on the radio a LILCO representative say that certain people living within ten miles of Shoreham may have been exposed to radiation during their trip out of the evacuation zone and should go to a-l specific location in Nassau County to be monitored for 13 possible radioactive contamination, would you go to the specific location in Nassau to see if you had been is contaminated with radiation or go somewhere else to have your radiation level checked or would not bother to have your radiation level checked.
O Now, just as a curiosity, when people read these questions, would they have read 1, 2 and 3, or do they just read the choices?
t 21 I
A They just read the choices.
Q So, the 1, 2 and 3 is for your recorder?
23 A
Yeah.
24 Q
Okay.
Now, which EBS message or messages does this question correspond to?
8 4
1 f'
iu
71200505 3863; auswalsh 1
A>
I would have-to look.through them.
I do not remember the --
3 Q
Would you take a minute:to do that, please?
d (The witness is lookingL through documents.)
l 5
A' Apparently the first time'at least.that it's --
6 it may appear more than once.
We have it in 8.
The-
-).
7 Director of LERO, J.. Kessler, recommends.that all residents 8
of Zones A, B, F, G, K and Q.should report to the Nassau 9
Coliseum before going anywhere else, that at.the Coliseum-10 the-public would be monitored for possible radioactive contamination.
12
~
And I-think later on they may-have added the 13 rest of the zones.
But,.I would have to check the messages, 14 0
Okay.
Turn the page and check 8.1.
15 A
Yes.
16 0
Is that information that you were talking about-17 in 8.17 18 (The witness is looking at the document.)
19 A
Yes.
It says -- it mentions the zones, and it 20 says since they may have been exposed to radiation on their 21 i
trip out of the EPZ.
22 0
Right.
And, would you take a look at Message 23 Number 9, the last page of Message Number 9?
24 A
Yes.
25 0
And, is this part of the EBS messages that you a
71200505 3864 suawalsh s
l based Question 16 on?
2 A
Yes.
It's in several of them.
3 0
It's in 9.1,'too, isn't it?
t A
I imagine so.
O All right.
6 (The witness is looking at the document.)
A I don't seem to have that one here.
8 O
It's in your attachments, but --
A Okay.
Q
-- don't bother.
That's fine.
A
,0kay.
0 Now, in Question 16 I take it that when you 13 asked somebody Question 12, if they said they were going to l
evacuate you jumped to 16.
So, some people got the is
'information in Question 12 and then answered-16; some people got got the information in 12 and 13 and then answered 16; some people got the information in 12,13 and 14 and then answered 16; and, some people got lucky -- lucky people got i
19 l
all four questions and then went to 16, right?
l 20 A
Right.
l 21 I
Q Have you told people in Question 16 about-whether they should assume they are one of the people living 23 within ten miles who may have been exposed during the trip 24 out of the EPZ?.
25 A
No '.
L_______-_-_____--___________
- l. ;
l 71200505 3865
-i cuewalsh 1
Q So, when they. responded --
j 2
A We don't'tell people to assume anything except i
3 that they are at home and they hear these messages.
4 Q
And, then'once they said they left you asked 5
them whether they would go to be monitored 1or they-would go-somewhere else to be monitored or --
7 A
Yeah, everybody was questioned.
Everybody was j
asked Question 16, the entire sample.
O Including the people who said they would'never leave?
11 A
Right.
12 Q
Okay.
13 A
Because even people who wouldn't evacuate.still 14 might want to be monitored.
15 j
0 Well, that's true.
But, then would you hold the 16 response to Question 16 out as any indication of whether the 17 l
EBS messages that Question 16 is based on were successful?
I s
A I would think -- essentially the answers to-1 19 Question 16 showed that a very'large proportion of Long 20 Island residents would go to be. monitored.
I think, as I 21 recall, 50 percent of the respondents said that'they would 22 go to the relocation center in Nassau County,.one of the 23 specific sites, and an' additional 20 percent, as I recall, 24 maybe more, said that they would go somewhere else.
25 Now, it seems to me that the EBS messages told 8
A
71200505 3866-cuawalsh 4
i only people who were living in the EPZ that they may have been exposed.
And, this'just indicates -- it's one other piece of evidence along with a lot of other evidence.that-people on Long Island, when they hear these messages, are not going to believe what they_are told; that people who live outside the zone are. going to feel that.if people 7
inside the zone were exposed to potentially dangerous levels a
of radiation requiring checking for contamination that they may have been exposed to similar levels of radiation, and that's why they said they would go to have their radiation level checked.
12 But, to me this question confirms the other 13 results, that people don't believe what they hear LILCO saying and won't do what-LILCO tells them to do.
15 0
And, I take it that it's your view that 16 responses would not have changed had the respondents to Question 16 been given information about whether they were in the group of people who were likely cont'aminated?
A No.
As I said before, the great majority of people know where they live' I mean, for example, how would it change the answers of people in Nassau County.
The message says that people leaving the EPZ, the 10-mile EPZ, may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and have to be checked for contamination.
25 Well, certainly people in Nassau County know that they don't
)
ii).
71200505 3867 su walsh 1
live in the EPZ but yet large numbers of people in Nassau 2
County said thay would go to these centers to be checked for 1
contamination.
4 So, it's clear that even if you told each 5
respondent, you live in the EPZ/you don't live in the EPZ, 6
it's not going to make any difference.
People don't believe the EPZ.
Emergency planners may believe in the EPZ, but i
8 citizens don't believe in the EPZ.
They don't believe that the ten mile circle is some sort of magic circle that's 10 l
going to protect them.
I I
11 l
And, they believe that if there is an accident I
l 12 at Shoreham that they will be exposed to radiation whether 13 l
they are in that zone or out of it.
That may be irrational; it may not be true, but that's what they believe and that's 15 what we have to consider in planning for emergencies.
I 16 O
And, the view you just expressed about -- or the 17 observation you expressed about -- people's beliefs about the EPZ has been borne out in the other surveys that you 19 took as well, hasn't it?
20 A
I'm not sure if we have specific questions in 21 there on that, but it was certainly borne out by the focus 22 groups.
23 0
I see.
On Question 17 you asked people --
24 that's at Page 56, it's just the next question from the one 25 we are talking about, you asked people whether they would
71200505 3868
..,cu;walsh I
call a number provided by LILCO to get more information or s
to have questions answered, right?
A Yes.
O What information, in your view, were respondents assuming they already had when they answered whether they would call to get more information?
A I don't know what respondents were assuming.
All I can tell you is what respondents were told by that time.
10 Respondents have been told -- all respondents had been told that some incident had occurred at the 12 l
Shoreham plant.
And, different respondents were told 13 differing amounts of information, as you know, depending j
upon how far we took them through this scenario.
- But, l
15 j
everybody was told that there was an incident.
And, everybody was told this information about people in the EPZ potentially being exposed to l
contamination.
That much we know, that that's what people --
i the respondents knew.
20 And, so we asked these people would they call 21 this number.
And, we found out that a large -- a huge number of people said that they would call this number, l
23 indicating that the entire phone system on Long Island would j
24 be thrown immediately into gridlock.
25 j
Q Well, you are mixing your traffic and i
\\
1 O
II A>
71200505 3869 1suswalsh-1 communications metaphor but, yeah.
Is it your view that 2
when people got to Question 17 that in the context of
-3
. answering this survey that they understood that they were 4
taking with them the information that they had received in 12 and 16 o r 12, 13, and 16, o r 12, 13, 14 and 167.
6 A
I don't understand what you mean by "taking with 7
them?"
8 0
Were they answering Question 17 as an individual 9
unit, or were they considering the other information-they 10 had been given prior?
In other words, does Question 17, in your view, 12 l
tell the respondent that based on the information I've 13 already given you-in 12 through 15 or 12 through 16, however 14 i
many of those questions I read to you, would'you call to 15 obtain more information in addition to the information in 16 those questions?
17 A
Yes, of course.
This question would be totally is 8
l meaningless out of context.
Without the other questions, 19 people wouldn't understand the question at all.
20 See, all these quertions are arranged in the 21 scenario as the scenario unfolded.
And, people -- if you 22 just read this question to people without telling them there 23 had been an incident at Shoreham, they wouldn't understand 24 the question.
You couldn't.ask it.
25 So it, of course, assumes that they know that e
i f
~
71200505 3870 cu;walsh I
there has been something which had happened at Shoreham.
Different respondents know differing amounts, depending upon how they answered the prior questions.
0 Okay.
And, then I take it from that response 3
that your view would be that the response to Question 17 also takes into account the first two questions that you asked them about how dangerous it is to live near a nuclear power plant and whether they would describe themselves as a supporter or an opponent of a plant?
A Yes.
But, I don't think that those questions g
effected the results at all.
I am positive that if you left those questions out that -- if you left out -- excuse me for a second.
I will go back to.--
(The witness is looking at'the document.)
Q It's on Page 53.
A I have so many pages that I'm having trouble --
Q Yeah.
I'm awash in paper myself, I'm afraid.
A Does anybody have another copy of this survey?
(The witness is furnished a document.)
20 Here I go.
Okay.
What I'm saying here is that, 21 l
in my opinion, if you had left out Questions 6 through 11 l
that the answers to any of the following questions would not have been effected.
They did not influence the following questions.
We needed that information in order to try to IL
71200505' 3871 suewalsh I
l understand why people behaved the way they did.
We felt'
-1 2
that that was important.
But, I don't think'that these questions influenced the prior question.
I'm'sure that if you left them out and redid the 5
survey you would come up with results that were identical.
O What's your basis for that opinion, Professor 7
Cole?
8 A
Doing, as I said before, well over 150 surveys over.the last 12 years and my knowledge in knowing how moving questions around in a survey, how adding or deleting questions effect results.
And, these questions weren't 12 are not going to effect those other results.
13 I mean, I would be willing to wager that if we 14 reproduced this survey using the identical methods and left 15 these questions out, there is no way that you are going to 16 get any difference in those quections.
17 0
Those --
18 A
The --
19 Q
I'm sorry.
20 i
A
-- difference would be within the expected 21 sampling error.
That is, if you did the same survey over, 22 you will always get minor differences as a result of 23 sampling error.
24 But, if you found any differences I would be~
extremely shocked, because all of my experience shows that l
1
-71200505--
3872--
suswalsh I
1 questions like this doni't effect the other questions.
Q Those questions aren't based on anything in the EBS messages, are'they?
A No.
Q Why did you include them in your survey?
A Because we wanted to try to understand
in addition to gathering some descriptive information, which-was our primary goal in' doing this research', we also wanted to try to understand-why people behaved.this way.
our primary goal was to describe it, what would g
happen if a, real accident. such as the one depicted in the LILCO scenario were to occur.
And, we asked those people and we got information'on'what would happen.
But, in addition to that, a secondary goal was to try to gain some insight into.why people would behave like that.
And, we felt that we needed some'of these questions in order to understand why people would behave as they did.
20 21 22 23 24 25 i
h, L
l 71200606' 3873 jo:walsh-1 Q
Do you understand the responses they gave of-how j
2 they thought they would behave in a real emergency?
3 A
I believe thatithese surveys are a very accurate Way to predict how people will behave in a real emergency A
5 and, therefore, I want to understand why people will behave 1
6 this way.
1 7
Why will people who live a good distance away
)
i 8
from a nuclear plant, who are told that they are in no j
9 danger, why will they.still evacuate?
10 Why won't they follow the recommendations?
11 Q
And to find out the,
'why,' of actual behavior 12 during an e~mergency, you asked them'how dangerous they-l
~
13 thought a power plant was, and whether they were a supporter Id or an opponent of nuclear power, right, in part?
15-A In part, right.
16 0
And it is your view that how dangerous they 17 think a nuclear power plant is, and whether they are a 18 supporter or an opponent will govern evacuation behavior in 19 an emergency, right?
20 A
It is one factor, but we -- what this survey 21 confirmed as well as dozens of other research studies, is-22 that preexisting fears of radiation' influenced the behavior 23 of people during a radiological emergency.
2d Q
Are there any other questions on your survey 25 that you asked to find out the why of your answers?
O
71200606 3874 joswalsh 1
A The questions on Chernobyl.
2 Q
And what light, in your view, would that shed on 3
evacuation behavior in an emergency?
d A
Could you make your question more specific?
5 Q
I am sorry.
How, in your view, do the questions 6
on.Chernobyl explain the responses you got on your survey?
7 A
Well, we wanted to see whether or not people who a
were familiar with Chernobyl, and who believed that Chernobyl had had, could happen on Long Island.
10 We asked several questions on Chernobyl.
One 11 was whether they are familiar with it, two whether they 12 thought such an accident could happen on Long Island, and I 13 think as I recall a third one was how far in distance people
~
Id were nagatively affected by Chernobyl, and we wanted to see 15 whether people who believe that Chernobyl could happen, and 16 it would have a widespread effect, would be more likely to 17 say they would evacuate, because it was our opinion that 18 Chernobyl significantly changed the attitudes of Long Island 19 residents towards nuclear power, and it increased their fear, because after Chernobyl people believed that a very 20 l
21 dangerous accident was possible.
They had been told that it 22 was impossible, and it happened.
23 Q
And I take it it is your view that your survey 24 results bear out your thesis that there was a significant 25 increase in the number of people who said they would Il b
J 71200606-
~3875 i
l jonwsish' 1
evacuate as a resultLof Chernoby1?
q 2
A It supports that' hypothesis.
It doesn't prove 3
it.
It is very hard to prove something like that.
It --
d this survey does show a-higher proportionate of people l
5 saying they would. evacuate than other surveys that have been 6
conducted on Long Island, but it is hard-to say whether it 7
is because of LILCO's EBS messages, which I-believe were l
8 very confusing and frightening to people, or Chernobyl, or a 9
combination of these things.
j l
10 I personally believe that it is a combinat' ion of.
'l 1
11 these things.
I believe that people are more afraid now as j
12 a result of Chernobyl.
I did a survey for Newsday, in whlch 13 we researched the effect of Chernobyl, and we found that a
)
l 14 lot of people after Chernobyl who had been undecided about 1
15 nuclear. power were now against it and more afraid of it, so 16 I think that Chernobyl did have an effect.
17 I also think that the reason we.got higher 18 proportions of people saying that they would leave and would l
19 not follow LILCO's recommendations has toido with the --
20 that we used the actual EBS messages, and that they really 21 caused people to become frightened.
22 0
Question 19 in your survey asks whether the-23 respondent would believe LILCO' officials who say that people i
2d living greater than ten miles away from the plant were safe,.
25 right?
l A
L__-__________-
71200606 3876' joswalsh' 1
A Yes.
4 2
0 Is this questionJbas'ed in your: view upon l
]
3 information in the EBS messages?
j d
A In general.yes, because all of the EBS' messages I
contained a statement-that people who live more than ten-1 5
6 miles away from the plant didn't have to take any. protective
~
L
'7 action, and so essentially this question was aimed at a
finding out whether people believed that statement.
9 It doesn't use the exact wording, but it is s
10 based upon the EBS messages.
Il Q
Now, Professor Cole, you have done many polls on i
12
~
all manner"bf issues during the course of your work ~ as a 13 survey researcher,. haven't.you?
1
~
id A
Yes.
15 Q
And that is borne out in your prior testimony in l
16 this proceeding, and also in your vitae and that sort of:
=
17 thing, and you have done as part of that work voting polls 18 in accordance with your usual professional standards, right?
19 A
Yes.
20 Q
And when you have done voting. polls, you 21 compared the polls to the actual voting behavior afterwards, 22 haven't you?
l 23 A
Yes.
i 2d Q
And your' reputation as a survey researcher in 25 part is based on the accuracy of those sorts of polls l
4
71200606 3877 joswalsh I
compared to' actual behavior, right?
2 A
In part.
3 Q
Now, it is true that you found that' peoples 4
behavior matches what they will say they will do in a poll, 5
as long as they don't change their mind before they vote, 6
right?
7 A
If you are talking about populations, yes.
What 8
we do is we interview a sample.
Let's say we find sixty 9
percent will vote for the Republican candidate, and then we 10 find that 61 percent vote' for the Republican candidate, but 11 we don't have information on ~what particular individuals ~ do.
12 0
~Right.
And you have done, in addition to voting 13 polls, you have done-several polls now about Long Islanders 14 intended behavior in response to a Shoreham emergency, is right?
16 A
Yes.
17 Q
And you testify on Page 160 of your testimony, 18 that your survey results reveal in part that people will not 19 seek further information after a first EBS message, but will 20 go ahead and try to evacuate upon first hearing the first 21 EBS message, right?
22 A
Could you give me the line please?
23 Q
I am sorry.
Hang on a second.
It is Page 160.
2d A
Yes.
And the line?
Are you saying, 'thus, 25 after hearing the first EBS message, more than half of the L_
l' l
71200606 3878 joswalsh i
1 1
households on Long Island would begin the attempt to l
i 2
evacuate?'
3 Q
Right.
That is what your results found,:right?
1 1
l d
A Exactly, yes.
l Q.
And, of course, there is no Shoreham emergency
)
5 6
behavior to compare these polls to, is there?
l A
No.
Thank' God, 7
i 8
.0 Yes, I egree with that.
Now, you haven't studied human behavior in emergencies other than a Shoreham 1
l 10 emergency to determine whether your poll conclusions have i
been borne out in other emergency responses, have you?
]
12 A
'Well, I am familiar with a lot of researchion l
i 13 Three Mile Island, and as everybody knows, Three Mile id Island, 2,500 people were told 1to evacuate, and about 15 144,000 people actually did evacuate, and it turns out that 16 this is pretty much what the surveys said were done on j
l 17 Shoreham at an earlier point in time predicted, so there is 18 confirming evidence on the only accident we had, which is 19 TMI, that evacuation shadow was a big problem.
20 0
Right.
You have compared those numbers, but it 21 is true, isn't it, that TMI findings also found that after 22 the first emergency warning, people sought out more 23 information.
They did not immediately evacuate, isn't that l
2d right?
25 A
I am not that familiar with that detail on those
71200606 3879 jo walsh 1
studies.
I couldn't answer that question.
2 O
Okay.
Mr. Rowan, you were at TMI weren't you?
3 A
(Witness Rowan)
Yes, indeed.
d Q
Do you recall anything that might shed light on 5
this question?
6 0
Offhand, I don't remember the numbers of people l
l 7
who evacuated.
I do know that Three Mile Island was the 8
first incident of its kind, so perhaps a comparison with q
l 9
what might happen at Shoreham after we have the memory 1
10 collectively of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl might not be il exactly applicable.
12
' But as regards Three Mile' Island, there was a 13 great deal of confusion.
The State authorities were having 1d some difficulty deciding whether to recommend an evacuation, 15 reporters were pressing to know when will you issue an 16 evacuation order which put pressure on State officials to do l
17 something, and consequently during this entire period people l
18 were driving, leaving the area, over a period of days.
19 In other words, it all wasn't happening the way l
20 Dr. Cole's research indicates, and I happen to agree, would 21 happen in Long Island if something were to go wrong at l
22 Shoreham, but I think that is because we just now have a 23 memory of what did happen previously at Three Mile Island 24 and Chernobyl, so I am not sure it is the exact same thing, 25 but I will be glad to walk through Three Mile Island if you
^
71200606 3880 joswalsh 1
s I
want to.
I am just not sure it is applicable.
2 A
(Witness Cole)
Excuse me, I would like to add 3
to the answer.
One of the findings that emerge in all of my f
d research at Shoreham, that impressed me at least, it just 5
seemed to me why would so many people leave immediately?
It 6
is hard to believe.
7 I look at these results and I see that 53 8
percent of everybody on Long Island is going to leave at 7 9
a.m., as soon as they hear the first EBS message.
10 It seems a little hard to believe.
But in the l
focus groups, I really gained a lot of insigt into why this j
12 is, and now I think I understand it.
13 Everybody on Long Island -- well, not everybody, j
1 f
Id but the majority of the people on Long Island have -- they j
is have two fears in relation to Shoreham; they have fears that i
1 16 they would be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation from j
an accident, but they have another fear.
l 17 l
18 They have a fear that they can't get out.
You 19 have a very peculiar geography on Long Island which is 20 different from TMI, as everybody knows.
I 21 Most people believe that it is impossible to i
22 evacuate Long Island.
We have had that in one survey after 23 another.
24 They believe that it is impossible to get out.
25 That the traffic will be horrible.
That there will be l
l I
l i
71200606 3881 joswalsh 1
disorderly conduct on the road.
That it will be dangerous,
)
2 and therefore, one of the reasons I believe why people say 3
that they will leave immediately, and why they won't await d
additional information here, whereas they did at TMI, is 5
because they feel if they don't leave immediately on Long 6
Island, they can't get out.
7 It is either leave now, or you are stuck.
You 8
have to get out right away, or you have no chance.
People 9
express that over and over again in the focus groups, and I
)
10 think that helps explain why so many people would leave so il early, which was surprising to me.
12 0
' And as part of your knowledge of emergency 13 behavior, are you generally familiar with responses in Id hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, that sort of thing?
15 A
I am not an expert in general on emergency 1
16 behavior.
I am familiar with Dr. Mileti's and Dr. Russell 17 Dynes testimony on this matter, but this is not my area of 1e expertise in sociology.
19 Q
Well, their testimony is a good start, but we 20 will leave it.
Professor Saegert, is it your view that in 21 response to a first warning in emergencies, peoples behavior 22 is to flee?
23 A
(Witness Saegert)
I think you are making that 24 question too general for me to answer truthfully.
25 I think to answer it you have to distinguish
\\
71200606 3882 jo:walsh i
i I
between kinds of emergencies.
There are, as you probably 2
know, models of behavior under emergency conditions, and 3
responses, models of responses to warnings, and they usually go through a stage of development in which the person first d
5 becomes aware of the emergency.
6 Lindell and one of his colleagues have one of 7
these.
My colleague, Neal Weinstein has another.
And they a
all depend upon convincing people that such an accident i
9 could happen, and that the person involved could be j
10 implicated in the harm that would be done, and that usually 31 depends on prior existing belief and information 12 communicate ~d during the emergency.
13 In natural disasters, people usually believe that they would not be harmed by a particular emergency.
Id i
15 That they personally ray escape danger.
16 Then they have the second level of confirmation, 17 which is that they can see that if the house next door was ta blown down and theirs was not, they did personally escape M
danger.
20 Both of those were conditions that are 21 completely different than nuclear accident, in which people 22 first of all believe that they will be harmed, and so their 23 first response will be to leave.
24 You don't have to go through that long difficult 25 situation that you might go through if a flood were 4
m_-________.___..__..
71200606-3883 jo2walsh.
1 impending, or a hurricane was impending, of convincing i
2 people, and indeed in the focus ' group interviews we see that 3
people said I have lived through hurricanes, I didn't leave, d
I didn't evacuate, but the minute I. heard this message I 5
would go, because this is unknown to me because I. won't know 6
when I have been exposed, and because it is much more 7
harmful in my opinion, than the likely consequence of a a
hurricane.
9 Q
Professor Saegert, is your view that you just 10 expressed borne out in the response to TMI?
II A
Well, I admit it was a different situation, in
~
12 that the fi'rst information on what was happening at TMI'was 13 very confusing, and the situation sort of gradually emerged.
14 I think that what happened when you codified the 15 EBS messages and so on, is that you have clarified the onset 16 of the emergency.
17 I think once having clarified that onset, you is will get an immediate response.
19 MS. McCLESKEY:
I am at a possible stopping i
20 point, or I could go on for another fifteen or twenty 21 minutes, and then be at another.
What would you like to do 22 about lunch?
23 JUDGE FRYE:
Why don't we break for lunch at 2d this point, but before we do I have one question that I 25 would like to put to Dr. Cole.
71200606 3884'
-jonwalsh I-Dr. Cole, you indicated. early on this morning 2
that, as I recall,.you did not use the term LERO or Local 3
Emergencp Response Organization, because' people.would not d
know what that was.
5 Do you have any idea of any kind of an educated 6
guess as to what the response would have been had you used i
7 that' term instead of LILCO?
8 WITNESS COLE:
Yeah.
I don't think'it would have been much different.
There now have.been quite a 10 l
number of surveys of this type, behavioral intention il surveys, trying to measure what_ people would do in the case
~
12 of a nuclea'r accident at a nuclear plant, and they all show 13 the same thing.
And they all use different wording, and
~
Id LILCO conducted surveys several years ago, I conducted l
15 surveys for Newsday, a LILCO witness, Michael Lindell, has 16 conducted a survey.
17 All of these surveys, they all show the same 18 thing, that there will be a big evacuation shadow.
So, when 19 you look at the consistency of these results, you have to i
20 conclude that minor differences in the wording of questions l
21 or in the placement of questions really aren't' going to 22 affect the results.
I l
23 It may change it a little here and there, but 24 that is not what we were aiming at doing.
We weren't really 25 aiming and seeing if 50 percent or 55' percent would i
71200606_
3885 joswalsh l
1 evacuate; we were aimed at getting genera 1' pictures of what 2
people would do, and I don't think you would find any 1
3 difference if you added the LERO or some of the other terms-d to the scenario.
I think it would be = more confusing, but I 5
think the responses would be essentially the same.
4 6
JUDGE FRYE:
Substituting LERO for LILCO?
l 7
WITNESS COLE:
Yes.
j l
8 JUDGE FRYE:
Thank you.
9 BY MS. Mc CLESKEY:
(Continuing) 10 0
I have a follow-up question, and I hate to lose 11 it.
Is it your view that changing the source of.the 12 information'in your questions would not have changed the 13 answers?
14 A
(Witness Cole)
In this situation that we have 15 on Long Island, I think that LILCO has a particu17:1y low 16 level of credibility.
4 17 I think that if the source of information was 18 something else, the Government, let's say, that you might 19 have had somewhat different answers, but I still think that l
20 you would get -- if the messages were the same, just 1
l 21 changing the source to let's say the State or the County, 22 that you would still get a very heavy evacuation shadow.
23 Not, perhaps, quite as heavy as you would with 24 LILCO, because LILCO_has particularly low credibility.
l But with these messages and this scenario, just 25 I
i.
71200606 3886 joewalsh q
changing the source of the information is not going to 2
change it substantially.
3 And'the reason for that is that there aren't d
that many people who have high credibility.
LILCO has very 5
low credibility, but then Government in our society doesn't 6
have a lot of credibility either.
I think most people are 7
skeptical of government, so you are dealing with various l
8 levels of lack of credibility, with LILCO being the lowest, but the other sources also having low credibility.
10 0
And it is your view that if you had -- instead j
of saying, 'LILCO representatives,' the information you have 12 in your que'stions, if you had said, 'the Director of Local 13 Response in consultation with nuclear scientists, members of
- ~
14 LILCO, The Suffolk County Executive, and members of the New.
l 15 York State Dt!partment of Health,' say, and given the l
16
.information that it would not have changed the response?
l l
I?
A Not significantly.
IB MS. McCLESKEY:
Thank you.
!9 JUDGE PARIS:
Did you get any information from 1
j 20 your focus groups to suggest whether a lot of people, or a 21 few people, would know what LERO is?
1 1
22 WITNESS COLE:
Most people didn't know what it l
1 l
23 was.
I 24 JUDGE PARIS:
Never heard of it?
)
25 WITNESS COLE:
No, they never heard of it, and
1 i
i 71200606 3887 j
jo2walsh J
f I
they assumed that when we played the messages,'and they.
2 heard that this is the emergency broadcast. system, I_think-j 3
that was the first line in the EBS messages,.they assumed that it was the government that was making.the. announcement.
4 5
Now, in part of the focus groups,'I informed the 6
people that the messages came from LILCO'because that is 7
what they would have learned from the media, which would-
- l u
S
'have been covering the whole event.
J 9
They_would have learned that.LERO was a LILCO 1
q 10 organization, and that the message information came from.
]
-l 31 LILCO, so I tried to sort of fill them in with a little 1
l 1
12 background information which they might have-gotten, or
.l i
13 which they definitely would have gotten from the media, but mostpeople,Idon'tthinkWouldhaveknownwh$tLEROwas.
14 i
15 Some of them did; some of_them were more 16 informed.
But most of them didn't.
17 BY MS. MC CLESKEY:'
(Continuing)
IB Q
Professor Cole, do you think it is fair to say that people thought that the EBS system, when you announced 1
19 20 it, was the Government, because they view that as an I
21 official source of information?
22 A
(Witness Cole)
Some people seem to have the 23 assumption that the emergency broadcast system was run by 24 the Government.
I don't know how they got that assumption, 25 but that is what some people assumed.
l b
71200606 3888 jonwalsh i
Q And is it fair to say that those people who l
1 2
assume that view the EBS system is an official source of 3
information?
A An official?
5 g
- yes, 6
A I don't know.
7 Q
Don't know?
l 8
JUDGE FRYE:
Do most people in your experience l
9 view the radio as a reliable source of information?
10 WITNESS COLE:
I don't think it is the radio so 11 much as to who is speaking on the radio.
You know, somebody
~
12 speaking whb has high credibility in the community, the'y are 13 going to believe that person.
If it is somebody who has low H~
id credibility, and all the surveys have shown that LILCO just is has very low credibility, they are not going to believe that l
l 16 person.
17 In the focus groups, I remember there was one 18 little discussion where somebody didn't know who J. Kessler 19 was, and so I said what if the media said that J. Kessler 20 was a LILCO employee, and the immediate response from 21 somebody in the group, oh, I would leave immediately then.
22 If it was LILCO thst was saying this, I wouldn't believe it.
23 I mean, they clearly have very low credibility.
l 24 JUDGE FRYE:
Shall we break for lunch?
We will l
l 25 be back at 1:30.
lm l
71200606 3889 l
joswalsh 1
(Whereupone a luncheon recess was taken at 12:00 2
noon, to reconvene at 1:30 p.m.,
this same day.)
i 3
I a
5 6
l 7
8 l
1 9
i I
10 11 12 l
14 15 1
1 16 i
17 I
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 I'
l:
m____________.____
'71200707-3890 suawalsh i
1 AFTERNO'ON SES~SION 2
(1:30 p.m.)
JUDGE FRYE:
Shall we go:back on the record?
4 Whereupon, PHILIP EVANS 6
SUSAN C. SAEGERT 7
STEPHEN COLE 8
and SPENCER FORD ROMAN, JR.
I f, resumed the witness stand and, having previoucly been duly l
sworn, were further examined and testified as follows:
l CROSS EXAMINATION l
u l
BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing) 34 Q
Professor Cole, one final matter and then I 15 promise we will leave your survey.
On Tables 2, 3 and 4 of your report, the tables that deal with questions -- the j
answers to Questions 12, 13 and 14 and 15, do you have with you information that you could tell us the sample sizes for each of the respondent groups?
Can you tell us, for example, how many' people i
21 I
were left after Question 12 to respond to Question 137 Do you understand my question?
Am I being-unclear?
24 A
(Witness Cole)
I think I might understand.
If you will give me a few seconds to think. 'Well, the way we i
71200707 3891 suewalsh I
computed these, they are-cumulative --
2 0
Okay.
3 A
-- so the sample size is the same for every 4
table, and those are essentially the total sample sizes for 5
that geographical area.
For example, in the EPZ it's close 6
to 400 and in the Suffolk -- outside the EPZ, it's 620 7
something, and Nassau is about 500 or whatever.
So, the 8
sample sizes are identical and these are cumulative.
O Let me do it this way.
Look in the first column on Table 2 on Page 21, the percentage, 68 percent --
A Yes.
12
~
Q Okay.
That means that in response to Questions 13 12 and 13 together, 68 percent of the people who live in 14 Nassau County responded they would leave home and go further 15 away from the plant --
16 A
Yes.
17 0
-- is that right?
18 A
Yes.
Yes.
19 Q
All right.
And, I take it that unless -- can 20 you tell me, of that 68 percent, how many people responded 21 to Question 12 who lived in Nassau that they would leave 22 home and go further away from the plant, and how many 23 additional people responded in 13?
24 A
Well, you could certainly -- you or I could 25 certainly compute it.
t
1 71200707 3892
{
sucwalsh i
1 Q
Yeah.
A What we would do is, we would take the base for Nassau -- let's see what the base is for Nassau.
4 (The witness is going through a document.)
Q Well, before we go into computing things, do you 6
j have that data readily available with you?
A Here?
)
8 1
Q Yeah.
A No.
'I would have to compute it, or else I would have to go back to the cross-tabs that you have.
Q Okay.
12 A
It's easily computable.
Let's'say it's 500 people, right.
Okay.
So, then you would say 52 percent of 500 people, you compute what that is and then you would look at the difference between the 68 percent and the 52 percent, 16 l
i and that would be the number of people.
Q Okay.
Great.
Right.
Thanks.
Professor Cole, g
in your view, what's the difference between the questionnaire method and focus group interviews?
,0 l
1 l
A They are very, very, very different.
-I mean, first of all, a questionnaire has as its aim to study a I
I random sample of people and to look at the results~obtained 23 i
from that sample and then make generalizations to a 24 I
population.
So, the first difference is that you have a lI 1
l l
_- _-_J
71200707 3893 suewalsh 1
random sample and your intention is to make a generalization 2
from that sample to the population.
A focus group, you are not aiming at making any a
generalizations.
It's not a quantitative survey.
You are 5
not aiming at saying 55 percent of all people believe this.
6 You are more interested in gaining an understanding for why 7
people feel the way they do.
8 So, the aims are different and the methods are 9
very different.
They are not similar.
10 Q
Okay.
How many people participated in each of your three focus groups?
12 A
There were a total of 49, and the numbers in 13 l
each are indicated on the Attachment 16 I think.
There were 14 nine in the first; there were 24 in the second; and, 16 in 15 the third.
16 Q
How did you choose these people?
17 A
What we did is, we had a random list of 18 telephone numbers from exchanges that were in the EPZ and 19 bordering the EPZ.
This is the same way that you would 20 choose people for a telephone survey.
21 So, we had a computer generate a list of random 22 telephone numbers.
We then called the people up, and using 23 the protocol which is Attachment 15, we had interviewers, 24 professionally trained interviewers, go through this 25 protocol and essentially told people about what we wanted to l
l I
i 71200707 suswalsh
- r. -m I
1 do and asked them if they were interested in participating.
{
I 2
j If they were interested in participating, we j
3 d
qualified them in a few different ways and then gave them directions to come to the -- these were done at the State 6
University of New York at Stony Brook.
7 Q
Did you know any of these people?
8 A
No.
l 9
Q And, I see from your table in Attachment 16 that 10 in the first group, five people came from outside the 10-mile zone and four came from within; is that right?
12 A
Yes.
13 Q
Are those figures correct?
I A
Yes.
l 15 0
And, then in the second group, 20 came from 16 l
outside the 10-mile zone and four came from within?
17 A
Right.
O And, in the third group, three people lived 19 outside the 10-mile zone and 13 lived within?
20 A
Right.
- 1 Q
Did you ask people where they lived and look at 22 their address and determine this, or did you ask them if 23 they lived inside the zone?
24 How did you get this.information?
25 A
We looked at the zip code.
I
71200707 3895 cuewalsh 1
Q Now, what kinds of determinations, if any,'did 2
you make about varying the demographics of the group?
3 A
I don't quite understand your question.
4 Q
Well, did you decide beforehand that for each 5
group you wanted a certain number'of women,'a certain number 6
of men, a certain number of. people in a particular age 7
bracket, a certain number of' people.who held certain beliefs' 8
about nuclear power or not, that sort of thing?
9 A
Yes.
Essentially, what we wanted to do is to.
10 get roughly half men and half women, and then we wanted the people to have the same attitudes roughly towards Shoreham as the population.
13 So, we did ask them questions on -- do you think Id that LILCO should be allowed to operate the Shoreham Nuclear 15 Power Plant to generate electricity?
And, we tried to make 16 sure that the composition of the focus groups as a whole 17 would be similar to that of the population on this issue 18 since obviously that was an issue which could effect their 19 attitudes towards evacuation.
20 0
And, you used the data from your questionnaire 21 to determine the response of the population as a whole?
22 A
Well, there were two.
First, from the first 23 questionnaire, yes.
24 Q
Right.
And, then you asked people the questions 25 that are included in the documents labeled Attachment 15-to
71200707
'3896 suowalsh
'I I
your_ testimony, right?
A 15 was a recruiting document.
And I would like to -- I don't-know if thi's was in.the final _ testimony, but I remember writing this.
When you do focus groups, one of'
.your main problems is you get people who will say'they will come to the focus group,-and then they don't actually show 7
up.
So, you do what the airlines dos. you overbook.
If you intend to have 15',-'you get 25.
So, what 9
we did is, when we booked them,we had them so that it was roughly the same distribution on the Shoreham question as in; g
the population, determined by the questionnaire.
But, we had no control over who would show up.
So, the answers here tell you who actually showed up, because we had them re-answer the question once they showed up.
16 Q
And, you served as moderator for all three' groups?
A Yes.
19 0
Do you do focus groups frequently in your work?
A I wouldn't say frequently, but I have done them l
quite a number of times before.
I don't do them as often as I do quantitative surveys but I have done them at least five or six times in the past.
And, I've done a lot of qualitative interviewing, hundreds of qualitative interviews in the
?
E
1 71200707 3897 suewalsh l
1 past, one-on-one interviews.
2 Q
' And, you would equate the one -on-one interviews 3
with the focus group work?
4 A
Pretty much.
The same kind of techniques and 5
skills that are used in doing what we call an open-ended 6
focus interview would be required in moderating a focus group.
8 But, I've done both.
I have done' focus groups
.]
9 l
for LILCO, in fact.
I 10 0
Okay.
So, when you say that you equate the one-on-one interviewing and the focus groups, that's from yoq.r.
j 12 perspective as interviewer.
13 A
I'm saying that the experience that.I've had in doing one-on-one interviews was used in preparation for -
15 doing focus groups.
But, I've done both focus groups and 16 individual qualitative interviews, a lot of them in the 17 past.
I started doing this research for my doctoral t
la dissertation in the 1960s.
19 Q
You would agree with me, though, that as a 20 method a one-on-one interview is very different from getting 21 a group of people together to talk about an-issue, wouldn't 22 you?
23 I
A Oh, yes.
Yeah, it's different because you don't 24 have obviously.the interaction between the different 25 participants.
j
_-_----____-_A
a 71200707 3898 suewalsh n
1-
{
Q Right.
And, that interaction can sometimes effect what's spoken about and what opinions are formed and also articulated, right?
A Most definitely.
And, that's why we chose the I
{
5 focus group format for this particular study, because we 6
j felt that when people -- if there were an accident at
)
Shoreham that people would be making their decisions in a g
I social setting, that they would be discussing what to do and the information with their family, with their neighbors, with anybody else that they saw.
And, that the most g
realistic situation in which the study, the reactions to the 12 1
EBS messages, was in a group situation in which people could 13 talk about it.
14 We could quite easily have interviewed 50 people qualitatively in a one-on-one situation.
There wouldn't 16 have been any significant difference in costs or analysis time T doi ~s that, but we purposely chose the focus group situation because it most closely represented what we felt would be the real situation people could face.
O Right.
These other five or six focus groups j
that you have done in the past, what generally has been the purpose for doing them?
1 A
I did some for LILCO on nuclear power and attitudes towards LILCO.
LILCO employed me and my corporation to suady why people had negative attitudes i
i
~'200707 3899 4
aswalsh 1
2 towards LILCU, in particular why they believe women have 1
3 more negative attitudes than men.
{
l 4
And, we did a whole series of research, l
5 including several surveys and individual interviews and 6
focus groups.
It resulted in a report that we issued to l
7 them.
That was back in 1981.
I J
8 I have done focus groups for "Newsday" on 9
several different issues also.
10 11
~
12
..e 13 l
15 16 17 18 19 20 i
21 l
l 22 l
23 l
24 i
25 L___-______
71200808 3900 jonwalsh i
1 I
O Do you generally do the focus groups in connection with administering a questionnaire on similar 3
subjects?
A Generally my strategy, the way I like to do it, I believe it is best to combine qualitative and quantitative research.
7 If I have some say in what is done, I will try g
to combine the two.
9 JUDGE.FRYE:
Do you generally do a focus group as part of a survey?
WITNESS COLE:
Unfortunately, no, because rqat clients aren't willing to pay for them.
They want hard 13 numbers, but then most clients aren't willing to pay for the focus group.
I think they would benefit a lot by doing the 15 j
focus groups, which I believe are very revealing, so I l
16 haven't done nearly a,s_many focus groups as I have surveys, j
but when I have done the focus groups, generally it has been in connection with some surveys.
19 JUDGE FRYE:
That was the point of my question.
20 They usually aren't done independently of a survey.
WITNESS COLE:
Sometimes they are, but in my 22 situation most of'the time they have been part of a big 23 project, in which we use several different techniques.
One will be focus groups, and the other will be survey.
25 BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing) i'
l l
71200808 3901 jo:walsh I
Q The five or six other times you have done these 2
focus groups, have you done them before the questionnaire or 3
I after?
i A
(Witness Cole)
Both.
5 0
You have done both.
So, you have used focus 6
1 groups to mold the questionnaire?
7 A
Sometimes if you don't know too much about the 8
situation that you are studying, the best thing to do is to 9
j start out with qualitative interviews; find out what people 10 think and to really learn.
11 It is a learning experience for the researcher, 12
.s and then you need that information in order to make up the 13 questionnaire.
14 The situation we are talking about here is 15 crystal clear what we wanted to know.
We had a very 16 specific event that we wanted to know how people would react 17 to those messages, so there was no need'to do focus groups 18 before the survey.
19 O
You would agree with me, wouldn't you, that you 20 wouldn't have a statistical basis to generalize from the 21 opinions expressed in the focus group to the general 22 population on Long Iciand?
23 A
That is correct.
I would not make any 24 statistical statements in the sense of numbers.
I think you 25 might be able to say that a lot, or many people feel this l
71200808 3902 joewalsh 1
way, but to quantify it more than that, no.
Q Okay.
Now, we received -- Long Island Lighting Company, through your counsel, received copies of the tapes of the focus groups this past Friday, and the tapes are garbled.
Do you have the originals of the tapes?
A Yes.
7 Q
And have you listened to them since you 8
conducted the focus groups?
A Parts of them, yes.
0 Can you understand them?
I A
Yes.
I was there.
That is a big difference, you see.
It is very hard to transcribe focus groups, by the 13 very nature of the situation.
You have two mikes, and you have up to twenty-15 some odd people sitting there, and they can all be talking at once, and when these people are talking at once, it is very hard to pick it all up, so it is a very difficult task to get a precise transcript of a focus group.
MS. McCLESKEY:
Okay.
I am going to hand out
,0 4
transcripts of the three focus groups provide by your counsel to us on March 2nd, and I would like to have them marked as LILCO Exhibits -- and jau will have to help me 23 out, Judge Frye.
I am not sure what number we are up to.
JUDGE FRYE:
I don't have that with me.
25 MS. McCLESKEY:
Can we agree I will go look it
71200808 3903 joswalsh 1
up, and fix it later.
2 JUDGE PARIS:
These are transcripts of' the 3
garbled tapes?
4 MS. McCLESKEY:
These.are! transcripts that were 5
provided to us on March 2nd in response to a request,for the 6
transcripts of the focus. groups.
They are from'Suffolk 7
County.
8 MR. ZABNLEUTER:
According to my records, this 9
would be Exhibit 5.
10 JUDGE FRYE:
Do you.want it as 5, 6, and 77 11 MS. McCLESKEY:
Right.
The first one will be.5, 12 the second one will be 6, and the third, 7.
13 (The above referenced documents 14 are marked LILCO Exercise Exhibits 15 5, 6, and 7, for identification.)
16 MS. McCLESKEY:
Now, I am also handing out three 17 revised transcripts that were received last Friday, April.
18 24th.
You can distinguish the old transcripts from the new 19 by the size of the type.
The old transcripts are in smaller 20 type, and I would like to have those marked as 8, 9, and 21 10.
22 (The above referenced documents 23 are marked LILCO Exercise Exhibits 24 8, 9, and 10, for identification.)
25 JUDGE PARIS:
Are you going to tell us what, e
___.m_________.-_-_-__-
-71200808
.3904 joswalsh i
1
' revised' means?
2 MS. McCLESKEY:
Well, I am hoping that Professor Cole would be able to tell us.
-4 JUDGE PARIS:
You also got these from Suffolk?'
MS. McCLESKEY:
Yes, sir.
They were provided to 6
us by counsel for Suffolk, County this last Friday.
JUDGE PARIS:
Were the first provided before 8
Friday?.
Yes, sir.
What we have numbered MS. McCLESKEY:
10 Exhibits 5, 6, and 7 were provided on March 2nd.
. JUDGE PARIS:
Okay.
Thank you.
l 12
./
MS. McCLESKEY:
Just so that everyone is 13 straight, the old transcripts'provided are 5,.6, and 7; and l
the new ones are 8, 9, and 10.
I l
15
{
BY MS. MC CLESKEY:.
(Continuing) 4 16 I
Q Now, Professor Cole, have you seen either sets
]
of these transcripts before?
A (Witness Cole)
I saw the'ones that you received' 19 earlier, which were done by an employee of mine.
And I saw 20 very briefly yesterday the edited redone-version of the first group, but I did not have a chance to really study 1
22 j
that, so I am only really familiar with the ones that.my.
R 23 employee did.
i 24 i
Q Professor Saegert, have you read the transcripts of the focus groups?
l i
r n
_____-____--2
'71200808 3905 joswalsh 1
A (Witness Saegert)
The first' set.
2 Q
Have you listened'to the tapes?
3 A
No, I didn't.
d Q
Mr. Evans, have.you read the transcripts of the j
5 i
focus groups?
6 A-(Witness Evans)
No, I have not.
7 Q
Have you listened to the tapes?
q 8
l A
No.
9 Q
Mr. Rowan, have you read the transcripts of the 10 focus groups?
A
.(Witness Rowan).
No, I have not.
12 Q
Have you listened to the tapes?
13 A
No.
14 0
Okay.
15 JUDGE PARIS:
Since Dr. Cole has not seen this 16 revised one until yesterday, I would like to ask who revised it?
18 WITNESS COLE:
As I understand it, some 19 secretaries at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart took the original 20 tapes and went over it.
21 These are very hard to decipher,.these tapes, 22 because people are talking at once.
It is hard to maintain 23 order.
You want people to be spontaneous; you want them to 24 say what is on their mind, so you don't want to tell people 25 to shut up.
.,_.__--m_--
1
.l i
71200808 3906 joswalsh-r i
1 On the other hand,. people talk _at the same time, so these tapes are hard to follow.
They are hard to I
transcribe, and what I did, I followed the normal procedure.
We transcribed this as best we could, picking upL whatever we could.
6 Then, and I don't know for what reason, but it 7
1 i
was decided to go over them again, and they spend a lot more i
8 l
time and a lot more resources than we had, and they picked up some additional material that other people were saying, or words that the original secretary had typed incorrectly,
]
so that essentially there are.some'what I would' characterize as minor differences.
Some things which are left out of-1 13 1
this transcript, which are in this one.
This (pointing) is a point complete transcript.
JUDGE PARIS:
Okay, thank you.
16 j
BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing)
)
17 Q
Now, let me ask you --
MS. LETSCHE:
If I might just add, since there is a reference to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, the reason why is i
Dr. Cole was out of the country at the time this process was going on, and so rather than -- he was literally unteachable, so we had -- rather than trying to ask his 23 employees to retype or to re-listen or whatever, we used people at our law firm to listen to them, and to re-transcribe them.
1
__~.a.._---.-_-_----Y
71200808 3907 joswalsh 1
MS. McCLESKEY:
Well, if Ms. Letsche is going to 2
testify, why was there a need for a re-transcription?
3 MS. LETSCHE:
I don't know that there was at 4
all.
We just had them redone again, because we had not 5
listened to the tapes.
No one had listened to the tapes b
except Dr. Cole and his employees.
7 JUDGE FRYE:
And when were they done again?.
8 MS. LETSCHE:
They were redone in the middle of 9
last week, I believe.
Because Dr. Cole was out of the 10 country, we did not physically have possession of the tapes, and it was after we were able to get ahold of the tapes that 12 e
i we had somebody re-transcribe them.
13 l
JUDGE FRYE:
Thank you.
14 BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing) 15 l
Q Professor Cole, neither set of transcripts 16 j
distinguishes one speaker from another.
That is, if person i
17 number one, and we will call him John, has spoken throughout, there is no way of knowing who was speaking at 19 any particular time, is that right?
20 A
(Witness Cole)
Not from the transcripts.
21 l
Q Juct from the tape?
A Just from the tape, and since I was there, I 23 have a firsthand experience with it and, therefore, when I 24 analyzed the report, I remember who said what for the most l
25 part.
Not altogether, but you are correct in saying there i
l
>J
l 71200808 3908 jo;walsh I
I is no way from the transcript in distinguishing one respondent from another, Q
Did everyone in each of your focus groups speak at least once?
5 A
Yes.
6 f
Q And I take it that there were people who spoke 7
more frequently, and people who spoke less frequently?
i 8
j l
A Yes.
l i
Q But everyone spoke at least once?
l A
Yes.
I l
11 j
Q Did you go in with a script of any sort?
12 A
I went in with an outline of questions that I 13 i
wanted to cover, but primarily what we did was just piry the l
14 l
EBS messages, and then have the people discuss them.
15 There were a series of questions and notes that 16 I wrote to myself of topics that I wanted to make sure we 17 covered, but generally the people would start to talk about
.a those things without prompting.
O Is it fair to say that the list of issues that you identified before going in were all discussed during the l l
21 1
course of the focus groups?
22 l
A Did the people in the focus groups discuss l
23 J
everything that I wanted them to discuss?
24
)
Q Yes.
I 25 i
A Yes.
1 1
,l
- f. j
H d
71200808-
' 3909' joswalsh 1
i Q
And did you raise,.all'the issues'that you,had 2
intended to raise as moderator?
3 l
A-Yes.
4 O
And youEsay that you played the EBS messages.
5 Could youldescribe forius how that was done?'
A Yes.
It was'a long seminar room, with a big;
-7 table, and the participants' were sitting ;aroun'd the table a
q and I was sitting at the head.of the table, and then'over on 9
4 the side of the room there was another table with several 10 tape. recorders and-some' speakers, and' the EBS. messages were recorded on a tape and I asked.the audio person. to play; t,he 12 first message, and that was played through.the speakers.
13
)
The respondents listened to it, and then we 14 stopped the EBS messages, and the discussion started, which 15 was recorded.
16 Q
So, you had pre-recorded the EBS messages that-17 were used during the exercise?
18 A
Yes.
19 0
You had someone just read them onto a tape?
20 A
Yes.
21 Q
Was the reader male or female?
22 A
Male.
23 Q
Did you play all the messages to each focus 24 group?
25 A
All your EBS messages?
4 4
a
i 71200808 3910 jonwalsh i
1 Q
Yes.
2 A
No, only the ones that were indicated here.
1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and I think 8, and I will check that.
Q EBS messages numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 were 5
played in each focus group?
A I will have to check the last -- I don't know 7
whether we played 6 or not.
We definitely did not play 4, and we did not play 9.
I would have to go back and check.
Q How did you choose which ones you wanted to play for the focus groups?
A Well, we certainly wanted the earlier ones. _We wanted to know how people would react as soon as they heard 13 about the accident, and then we picked out the ones which we 14 j
thought had the most new information.
15 Obviously, 4 as I recall was pretty much a repetition of 3.
There was not much new.
And then 5 was j
the first one that called for an evacuation, and then we played one that had a much more of an evacuation.
!9 So, essentially we picked out those which we felt showed the changes in the scenario, but we particularly i 21 i
were interested in getting the responses to the first three of them.
23 0
What was the date of the polling that you did?
24 It was around Christmas time, wasn't it?
25 A
It was all done in December.
It is indicated in i
71200808 3911 i
joswalsh I
1 the report that it was finished before New Years.
2 0
And what was the date of the focus groups?
3 I
A One of them was on January 20th, and the other 4
two were on February 7th.
nere there any particular reasons why the focus 6
groups were done on these dates?
Just your convenience, or -
i 7
1 8
A It was just when it fit into my schedule, and j
when we were able to get the necessary people to do the l
I recruiting.
1 11 I
Q Now, did you have the EBS messages read more_
than once to the groups?
13 A
The first focus group that we did, we started to 14 l
read the messages -- play the messages twice, and I think we 15 did that all the way until the end.
I tried to skip them, i
16 1
because it was clear that the people were getting impatient with them.
I 18 l
But the ocher two groups, we only played them 19 once.
On the basis of the first group, I decided that I was 20 not getting any additional information by playing these 21 messages twice.
This was annoying the participants to have 22 to listen to them twice.
23 Q
Now, when you played them twice, did you play 24 them twice in a row, and then start the discussion?
Is that 25 l
how it worked?
E______________.-
)
71200808 3912 i
jonwalsh i
1 A
Yes.
We would play it once, and then we would say:.
Okay, now imagine that fifteen minutes later you heard this message, and we played it over again.
O Will you turn to page 175 of your testimony, please?
A Yes.
7 O
All right.
Do you see there that the speaker-has said, according to your testimony, I live a half a mile 9
east of the plant, and I think I will make a nice gin and 10 tonic.
I figure I have been exposed, and I will just sit it out.
Do you see that?
A Yes.
13 l
Q Will you turn to Page 6 of the transcript that has been marked LILCO Exhibit No. 8, which is Focus Group No. 1, new transcript.
l 16 l
l A
Yes.
17 Q
Have you got it?
Have you got page 6, Professor Cole?
19 A
Yes, I do.
O okay.
Could you look at the third entry on that page, the third paragraph that has an,
~S" by it?
j A
Yeah.
21 Q
And do you see the gin and tonic comment?
A Yes.
25 0
Would you read the remainder of the sentence 1
l i
____a
'j 4
-71200808' 3913
'joswalsh p.
1 i
~
that doesn't appear in your testimony?
2 1
A
~And see how' bad 11t is. going.to be."
4 3
Q Right.
And that is not what'is indicated.in j
a b
your testimony, is it?-
5 A
.No, but'was'that in this transcript?.
6 1
Q
-So, your testimony was based on the old 7
1 transcripts?
)
8 A
My testimony was completely based upon theLold.
9 transcripts.
I never saw this until la.:st. night.
10 Q
Would you agree with me~that:the comment,.'and
)
11 4
see how bad it is going to-be' indicates that:the person ja 12 s
going to wait for additional information?
13 j
A This person, I remember this lady very well.
ja This person said that she was going to stay there, and.she 15 wouldn't leave no matter what happened, and sha said-that 16 about all the messages.
17 I have looked over the. transcript of the first 18 focus group, the redone transcript,. and I have compared it-
!9 with this (pointing). transcript, and I believe that the 20 errors, if you will, that the secretary made in transcribing 21 this, or what was left out, are really minor and almost 22 random.
i 23 There are things that are in'this corrected 24 transcript that.would have been very useful, some little 25 sentences here and there and adding it to my testimony.
1 I
- - - x
71200808 3914 1
jocwalsh j
I i
1 There are other things like this that-you might point out, l
2 but in general to me, my testimony would not have changed j
I 3
substantively at all.
Had I been working from this
)
4 transcript as opposed to this transcript.-
5 j
In fact, I mean it misunderstands the purpose of l
6 1
l focus groups.
A focus group isn't a deposition where every 7
i single word has to be taken down by a court reporter, j
l 8
I l
The idea in a focus group is to gain sort of an 9
insight and understanding as to how people think.
You never 10 q
can get down everything in a focus group.
11
)
In fact, you could take these tapes and redo.
I 12 them by other stenographers, and you are going to come out 13 with another version.
There is so much overlay of different l
14 l
people talking that you are going to get minor differences l
15 if you have different people transcribing them.
l 16 i
i The question is:
What difrerence, if any, does 17 that make?
And I would argue that if you compare these two l
transcripts and you look at them as a whole, that any 19 analyst, given these transcripts, and asked to come up and i
l
- 0 analyze the meaning of thece data, would come up with the
- 1 l
same conclusions for both set of transcripts.
22 That the things that were -- the errors that 23 were made, omissions or whatever, were random and 24 i
insignificant.
25 l
l
71200909 3915 marysimons I
I JUDGE PARIS:
Dr. Cole, to get the record 2
clarified with regard to the discrepancy that was pointed 3
out in your testimony would you read to us from page 5 of 4
the old transcript what was recorded in the old transcript, 5
the second answer from the bottom.
6 WITNESS COLE:
Do you want me to just read it?
7 JUDGE PARIS:
Yes, just read it.
8 WITNESS COLE:
"I live a half a mile east of the 9
plant and I think I would make a nice gin and tonic.
I 10 figure I've been exposed and I would just sit it out."
i 11 JUDGE PARIS:
So that's what you had 12 transcribed 13 WITNESS COLE:
Yes.
Apparently what happened is 14 that there was cross-talk, and the secretary who transcribed 15 this initially did not pick up the last couple of words, 16 It's extremely common in doing this kind of work.
17 BY MS. McCLESKEY:
18 Q
you said that you had compared the new 19 transcript of focus group one to the told transcript?
20 A
(Witness Cole)
I said I briefly looked at tha 21 corrections, the differences between the two to get a sense 22 of what kind of differences there were, and as far as I can 23 see substantively if I had been using this set of 24 transcripts here, the new set, my report would have been 25 substantively identical to what I have presented to you.
l 1
I 3916 71200909 morysimons You've looked at the two1 transcripts and
)
Q Right.
you've determined that your testimony would not change?
q 2
i 3
A Based upon these two, yes.
4 Q.
When did you look1at the two transcripts?
1 5
A Last night.
How much time did you spend on it?
6 Q
Maybe.45 minutes, but there weren't many-I A
I mean they were minor kinds of things.- They-j s
differences.
were things like what'you reported, words left out or minor i
9
]
10 kinds of changes.
j Will you turn to page 3 of the new focus group l
11 Q
t 12 transcript No. 1 which is marked' Exhibit 8, and would you 13 get out the old focus group transcript'No. l'which is marked' J
1 14 Exhibit No.
5.
A Yes.
13 Let's go through and' compare some'of the-16 Q
~
17 changes.
On the new page 3 in the fourth entry where 18 l
there is a speaker, the last sentence says "However, on 19 LILCO's record you wouldn't believe that it," doesn't it?
20 21 A
Yes.
22 Q
And on the old page 3 it's the third entry _on the page wnich an "S"
in front of it.
23 24 A
Yes.
"However, LILCO's record does-25 Q
The entry says, t
~
't
'71200909.
3917
marysimons-t 1
not' engender confidence,"'right?
'l 2
A-Yes.
3 Q-Is it your testimony that that was a i
d transcription error that you changed " engender. confidence" 5
to "on LILCO's r'ecord-you-wouldn't believe it"?
6
'A' I couldn't tell.
If we got out the. tape and-got i
7 some electronics experts in here, as they did-in Watergute,:
}
8 we might be able to go over these tapes inch by inch:and see
]
9 what was really said.
3 10 There were a lot of people that were talking at 11 once.
I don't know.. One of these.could be right andithe.
l 12 other wrongf but to me it doesn't make any difference.
To 13 me whether or not you say.on LILCO's. record you wouldn't believe'it,'or LILCO's record does not engender' confidence.
14 15 I mean could you tell me~what substantive difference that l
16 makes?
I don't see it, 17
-Q WouJd-you please turn to page 19 of the new I
18 transcript for the focus group No.
1, and will you turn to 19 old page 14.
That's Exhibit No.
5, page 14.
20 A
Yes.
21 Q
The 8th entry with an "S"
in front'of it,.the 22 third entry from the bottom ---
23 A
Yes.
I i
24 Q
--- which says, "I would go down in my 1
i 25 basement."
Do you see that?
s.
IA?
71200909 3918 carysimons 1
JUDGE PARIS:
Excuse me, where are you?
I don't 2
see it.
3 MS. McCLESKEY:
I'm on the old _ transcript..
1"m 4
sorry.
5 JUDGE PARIS:
Oh, okay.
6 WITNESS COLE:
Yes, I see it.
7 BY MS. McCLESKEY:
a Q
Do you see "I would go down in my basement"?
l 9
A Yes.
10 Q
Now on page 19 in the new transcript,'the 5th 11 entry, and it's just about dead center of the page.
12 A
>Yes.
13 Q
Would you read what the complete sentence now 14 says?
j l
15 A
"I would go down in my basement."
l 16 Q
In the new transcript on page 197 I
17 A
Ch.
I thought you were referring to'the old la one.
The new one says "I would go down in my basement and in listen to the radio."
And the old one is "I would go down 20 in my basement."
21 Q
Would you please turn to old page 19, and then 22 turn to new page 30.
{
23 (Witness complies.)
24 A
Yes.
25 Q
All right.
On the old page 19 about dead center 4,O
)
1 71200909 3919-j morysimons i
I there is "The Moderator" and I guess that's you.
Could you 1
2 please read what that says?
3 A
"How would you feel if you saw people, your-1 4
neighbors,: let's say, beginning to leave,'because everybody 5
here apparently thinks that almost everybody is going,to 6
leave.
So if you saw your neighbors beginning to leave, how 7
would that make you feel?"
8 Q
Right.
You just read the new transcript, which 1
9 is page 30 and marked Exhibit 8.
10 Now could you go back to the old transcript, i
11 which is marked Exhibit 5, and read in what the old 12 transcription was.
It's dead center-of that page.
13 A
"How would you feel if you saw your neighbors 14 beginning to~1 eave?"
15 Q
Right, and the new transcript added the two 16 sentences, "Because everyone here apparently thinks that.
17 almost everybody is going to leave.
So if you saw your 18 neighbors beginning to' leave how would that make you feel,"
!9 right?
20 A
yes.
21 Q
Now was it generally true that people were j
22 speaking over you as Moderator in these groups?
23 A
Yes.
24 Q
They interrupted you and spoke over you?
25 A
It was a very free session and everybody was t
.----_--_ m
71200909 3920 m:rysimons 1
talking.
I didn't want to prevent people.from speaking.
2
'Everybody was talking at once. 'I.tried to keep them in,line 3
sometimes, and you'll notice that there.are some places in 4
there where I asked' people and I urged people to talk one at 5
a time because of the-difficulty in transcribing it. But 6
every single ~ focus group that I've ever been involved in 7
there has been the same difficulty that you have' people a
talking at once and it makes it hard to get exact, precise-9 transcripts.
10 Q
Will you turn to the old transcript pages 27 11 through 28.
I 12 s(Witness complies.)
13 And then get out the new transcript and turn to 14 page 45.
15 (Witness complies.)
16 A
Yes.
)
17 Q
Now on the old transcript on page 27, the last i
18 question, which is by you, at.the bottom of-the.page, do you 19 see it?
It says "How clear?"
20 A
Yes.
1 21 Q
And if you turn the page the response is "Very 1
1 22 clear"?
Do you see that?
23 A
Yes.
1 24 Q
In the new transcript on page 45 it's the second 25 Moderator entry on that page.
Could you read that for us.
l l
L__________________.________
.I
l 1
71200909.
3921 Gorysimons l
l 1
A "How clear did you think this message was?"
2 Q
~ Right, and what is the response in the new 3
transcript?
4 A
" Contradictory."
1 1
5 Q
Right.
And is it your view-that "Very clear" 6
was changed to " Contradictory" because of a typist's error?
7 A
No.
It was my view that there were two subjects j
i 8
speaking at once and one-person picked up one and the other 9
person picked up the other.
But I should like to point out 10 that that what.we have in the transcript that I evaluated 11 was "Very clear."
In-other words, a respondent said that 12 the message-was very clear.
And what we have in this 13 transcript, this new transcript is the.respondant.says that 1
14-the message was contradictory.
j I
15 The only point I'm trying to make about this is, i
16 yes, it is hard to transcribe these things.
You could go 17 through them again and I'm sure come up with other minor 18 changes.
But it's clear from this kind of example that 19 there was no intent in transcribing these things to delete 20 anything or to mold the way in which these things were being 21 utilized by selectively tranceribing this.
The secretary 22 who did it had no idea what these were being used for.
23 JUDGE PARIS:
When you say the secretary who did j
24 it had no idea what these were being used for, are you 25 talking about your secretary or Kirkpatrick and Lockhart ---
r-e
. l.
\\
l 71200909 3922-morysimons I
I 1
WITNESS COLE:
No, my -- it actually wasn't my 2
secretary.
It was a person who I just hired.for the 3
purposes of transcribing these tapes.
4 JUDGE PARIS:
Was this person experienced in a
5 transcribing tapes?
6 WITNESS COLE:
yes, and had done a lot of it.
i 1
7 BY MS. McCLESKEY:
8 Q
Did you take the old. transcripts and listen with j
l 9
them to the tapes and check them?
10 A
(Witness Cole)
Not all the way through, no.
I 11 just checked to make sure that the secretary had gotten I
12 everything,-because when I first' looked at it'it was clear l
13 to me that there were some things that were left out.
I 14 mean I knew that this wasn't a precise, word-for-word 15 transcript.
I was there in the focus group and I remember 16 specifically one man saying that he was going to get his 38 17 and he was going to use this revolver to steal a boat, and 18 that never came through on the transcript.
Now apparently 19 it is on this transcript.
20 So I checked them to make sure that everything 21 was on, but I did not sit down and listen to the tapes word 22 for word and go over the transcripts with the tapes.
23 Q
In order to know what people actually said, from 24 what I understand from what you have been describing, it is 25 fair to say that you would have to have been in the room, I
L
171200909:
3923 l
marysimons i
o l
I have a transcript and have.tapesJthat yon ~could understand,.
l l
2 and even then you might not get it all'right?'
3 A
It depends on what you.mean by "know."
I mean 4
it depends on.what the purpose that you're doing things 15 for.
If you're talking;about exactly, precise' transcripts 6
'with the exact words of what every. single person said in the-
.7 texact order, yes,-you're.right.
If you're talking about.
8 knowing what the reactions of these people were to these.
9 messages, their attitudes, their sentiments, their feelings, 10 you will get the exact same view from reading this 11 transcript, the new transcript or any other transcript that 12 was made.
13 Q
Do you think that somebody who says "I would go i
14 to the basement and listen to.the radio" is_giving the exact 1
15 same view as someone who says "I would go to the basement"7 16 A
In that particular sentence the. person is saying 17 something else, but that doesn't affect the conclusions that l
18 you reach in the focus groups which aren't based'upon a 19 particular sentence.
You don't pull a particular sentence 20 out of context.
What you do is you-look at' themes.
i 21 Perhaps you would like me to tell you how you 22 analyze focus groups.
I would be happy to tell you how you 23 go about analyzing focus groups.
I mean you don't analyze 24 focus groups by looking for isolated sentences.-
25 Q
Why don't you tell us how you analyzed these q
i
{*
r s
ia__-__--
~-
q 1
71200909
'3924 scrysimons i
i particular focus groups.
2 A
Okay.
What you do-is'first you get the 1
3 tra'nscripts.in front of you, and then you start to ---
i q
4 Q
Excuse me.
AndLin this case"you got the.old-5 transcripts; is that what you did?
i 6
A Correct.
7 Q
Could.you try to make your response specific to 8
what you did this time around.
So you got the'old l
9 transcripts that we've marked 5, 6 and'77 10 A
Right.
Those were the only. transcripts that I' 11 had.
~
- 12. '
Q "Right.
13 A
Okay.
I had the transcripts 5, 6 and L' in-front a
14 of me.
I had drafts of these transcripts before wh.'.ch I b
15 checked against the tape, not verbatim, but just to.ukke i
16 sure that everything was on there.-
There were typing
)
17 errors, there were grammatical errors and these kinds of 18 things.
We tried to clean that up, and'then a new version j!
19 of the transcript was run off the word processor.
So we had 20 a cleaned up version of the transcripts with typos out and I
21 grammatical punctuation better.
22 Then you go through the transcript and you start 23 to look at themes.
You're not interested in, you know, 24 precise sentences.
You're looking for themes.
So,'for j
25 examp1.e. you might start reading the first transcript and-
-l s
5
71200909 3925 c2rysimons I
somebody might say how afraid of radiation they are, or how 2
they felt that the message was frightening.
3 So you would then make a list of themes that 4
come up, and you would code the transcripts so that for each 5
theme that came up you would have a reference to.the focus 6
group number and the page number.
So, for example, the 7
first thing I see on page 3, something did happen, but they 8
were very big about it.
Okay, they're talking about their 9
reactions to the clarity of the messages.
So I would write 10 down clarity of messages.
Then I would write down 1, 11 indicating focus group 1, then -3 indicating page 3.
~
12
.-Then I would go through all the transcripts and 13 I would have a series of quotations on that particular 14 theme.
There might have been 15 different themes that came I
i 15 up in these focus groups.
16 Q
Were there 15 themes in this particular set?
17 A
Approximately.
I don't remember exactly.
There 18 are approximately 15 themes, yes, more or less.
19 Q
And how many issues had you identified that you 20 wanted to talk about in your issues list before you went 21 into the focus group?
22 A
Somewhat less than that.
23 Q
Could you give us an idea of what those where?
24 A
Well, I was very much interested in the clarity 25 of the messages and how people responded to the messages and O
l 71200909 3926 i
marysimons i
1 what they would do when the heard the messages, their 2
feeling about LILCO's credibility and those general kinds of 3
- themes, j
i 4
Q Were fear and panic two of your. themes on your j
5 list going in?
j 6
A I would have to check my actual notes, but I do 1
7 not think so.
I think that this smarged from the group.
As j
l 8
I said, there were more themes which came up from the
]
i 9
analysis of the focus group transcripts than what I had on I
l 10 my list of things that I was interested in.
11 Q
Professor Cole, you say that you do have your I
l
~
l 12 list of issues that you went into the focus gyr,up with?
3 I
13 A
I might.
I'm not sure.
I would have to look i4 for it.
15 Q
All right.
16 And in terms of, just from memory today, is it i
17 your recollection that generally your list that you went in is with was all reflected in the themes that you got out of the 19 transcripts?
j 1
20 A
I don't understand the question.
21 Q
Does your list of issues that you went in as the 22 Moderator with appear on the list of themes that you took
.)
23 out of the transcripts after they were transcribed?
24 A
Yes.
25 Q
Every item that you went in with appears as one L_______
o
71200909
'3927 morysimons i
1 of the-themes that. people talked'about?
2 A.
Sometimes they were fractionated, For example, 3
one of the things I was interested in was credibility,'but d
during the focus groups it turned out that suspicion, 5
something I called suspicion emerged as a theme, that people 6
were extremely suspicious of anything which LILCo said..So 7
that when one EBS message was played, people would say I 8
don't believe them and I think it's going to get~ worse.
'And 9
people expressed this kind'of suspicion over and over again.
10 So that was a theme which. emerged from the focus
'l 11 groups which I did not have on any list beforehand, but
~
12 which was related to a more general theme, let's say the 13 credibility issue.
So that something like credibility when i
14 I actually analyzed it might have been broken down into four f
15 or five themes that emerged from the groups, i
16 Then after you have this list, what you do is j
17 you have a list of themes, maybe 15 different themes with 18 quotes.
So then you decide some sort of order of how do you 19 want to talk about these themes.
I l
20 Q
And your quotes were from the old transcript?
21 A
All the quotes were from the old transcript.
22 Q
so, for example, the fellow who said that he 23 found the EBS messages very clear would be appearing on one I
24 theme, and then when he changed into contradictory in the
)
25 new transcript he might appear on another~ theme?
1l
q
-i 71200909 3928 mnrysimons 1
'A They were two'different people probably who~said' 2
this, but I don't see what difference it makes.
J 3
Q How can one'tell?
l 1
4 A
Tell what?
l 5
Q If they were two different people or-one person?
6 A
Listen to the tape.
Do you have.the tapes here?
I 7
Q No, sir.
They are unintelligible and we left 1
a
.them in Richmond.
j I
9 JUDGE FRYE:
Are these video tapes.or just j
i 10 audio?
11 WITNESS COLE:
They are audio tapes and they are 12 not unintelligible because they're -- depending upon what 13 you mean by unintelligible.
I mean they are not crystal 14 claer.
15 JUDGE FRYE:
I have no idea whether they are 16 unintelligible or not.
17 WITNESS COLE:
Well, they were clear enough for is one secretary to make this transcript and they were clear 19 enough for another secretary to make till transcript, and if 20 you compared these two transcripts, you'll see that 90 21 percent is identical.
So they were far from unintelligible.
22 MS. McCLESKEY:
Well, let's do that then.
Let's 23 go through the transcripts for focus group No. I and 24 compare.
25 JUDGE PARIS:
Do you think in this clear versus l'
}
71200909 3929 l
marysimons I
1 contradictory answer that there were two people whose voices 2
came through and one said contradictory and one said,very l
l 3
clear and the two transcribers, one heard one and one heard 4
the other?
t 5
WITNESS COLE:
Probably.
That would be my guess l
t I
6 because you're sitting there and you play a message, and 7
let's say there are 15 or 20 people there.
And you say how j
B clear was that message to you and, you know, to some people 9
it's going to be clear and to other people it's not going to 10 be clear.
I pointed that out in my testimony.
So somebody 11 could have said very clear and somebody contradictory at the 12 same time,.and people will pick up_different things.
I 13 JUDGE PARIS:
Okay.
Thank you.
j i
14 JUDGE FRYE:
And then the group I gather would l
15 probably head off in one direction or another.
In other I
i 16 words, the group as a group would probably decide, however, l
i 17 groups reach these decisions, that the message was either t
18 clear or was contradictory and that would then I suppose be 19 reflected in their discussion.
l l
20 WITNESS COLE:
Well, not necessarily.
There 21 would be some people -- you might have some closure as in a j
22 jury let's say, you know.
They don't have to reach a l
l 23 decision.
They are not any obligation to reach any ---
l l
24 JUDGE FRYE:
No.
I guess I misspoke when I said l
I 25 decision.
I should say consensus I suppose would be a n
I 3930 71200909 Garysimons i
better word.
WITNESS COLE:
I'm saying it sometimes happened 2
2 3
that way, but frequently not.
You had come people, for example, who would just say that the messages were clear.
4 5
They understood them, they believed them and they believe 6
LILCO.
I remember there was one many who I said I 7
i s
believe LILCO.
I believe in the American worker, I have faith in this and I have faith in what they tell me and I'm
]
9
\\
to going to do it.
There was another man who was in the military
]
11 who said he'had had training in nuclear warfare and new
]
12 about radiation and he was telling the other people who to j
13 14 decontaminate.
He wasn't afraid about it.
Some of these and there were people maintained their positions throughout, 15 other people who were very distrustful of LILCO, hostile 16 towards LILCO and they maintained their positions, and there 17 i
were other people who listened to both sides, so to speak is and the debate that developed and they would then formulate 19 20 an opinion.
In fact, some people said well, this is the 21 22 first time I've really thought about it in this way and now f
I feel this way about it, which is a realistic situation
)
23 because if you had an accident at the plant, there would be 24 25 people who wouldn't have really thought about these issues
)
!L
i 71200909 3931l Ecrysimons i
i
^
{
1 and they would have to make some sortcof a. decision right 2
then as to what they would do, so 'it 's.. a. realistic: kind.of.
.l 3
situation.in that sense.
1 4
5 1
6
-)
'l 7
1 0
J 8
i
' 1 q
j 10 I
i 11
.a l
l 13 1
l l
.u s
14 q
i 15 l
I 16
)
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
,j i
b
'l 71201010 3932
,suswalsh 1
JUDGE PARIS:
It sounds like you were dealing-2 with human beings all right.
3 WITNESS COLE:
Yes.
l 4
i MS. MC CLESKEY:
I don't want to belabor.this, 5
but I do have eight examples from the testimony.that'I think l
6 it would profit going through with the quotations from the 7
testimony which are from the old transcript and what was g
said in the new transcript.
j 9
I We haven't done a 24-karat job on this, because g
we only got the new transcripts on Friday afternoon but we ij J
have been 3,hrough the first transcript and compared -it te g
the old transcript, and I will not subject everyone in this room to it, but I can ' represent that there is a change ~ on almost every page.
And, much of it is additional 1
information that does not appear in the old transcript.
JUDGE FRYE:
Are the changes of the same nature 97 1
as the changes that we have been through so.far?-
18 MS. MC CLESKEY:
They vary.
There are -- I will g
g e y u an example.
Turn to Page 176 of the testimony.
{
20 JUDGE PARIS:
Let me understand what you just g
said.
You said for -- in almost every case there is a g
i change.
Do you mean a change from the change in the I
23 testimony from what's in the old transcript, or a change in what's in the old transcript and what's in'the new transcript?
l f
1
1 71201010 3933 suswalsh 1
MS. MC CLESKEY:. I mean a change from what's in the old transcript to what's in the new transcript JUDGE PARIS:
Okay.
MS. MC CLESKEY:
The testimony tends to mirror the old transcript.
And, if I understand what Professor l
Cole has said, he used the old transcripts.
So, that would 7
make-some sense.
a JUDGE PARIS:
But, you didn't find discrepancies l
between the old transcript and the testimony?
MS. MC CLESKEY:
No, sir.
I JUDGE PARIS:
All right.
Go ahecd.
j BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing)
Q And,'you didn't change-any of this_ testimony, right?
This morning, you didn't change --
A (Witness Cole)
Oh, no.
No.
i 16 l
Q All right.
17 l
A No.
I don't believe that these differences that I went over last night between one transcript from the other makes the slightest bit of difference as far as my substantive conclustens.
21 Q
All right.
Nell, let's look --
JUDGE FRYE:
You have made that quite clear.
l WITNESS COLE:
Right.
i 24 BY MS. MC CLESKEY:
(Continuing)
Q Let's just look at Page 176 of your testimony.
- __ __ l
- 71201010 3934 suswalsh-l 1
A Yes.
2 Q
And, could you please turn to Page 27 of the'new 3
transcript of focus group Number 1, which is marked Exhibit 5
l A
Yes.
6 Q
Now, the last sentence of your excerpt at the-
-l 7
bottom of your testimony at Page-176 says, "If you have been=
g exposed to so much radiation your chances are not good,"
right?
,g A
Yeah.
)
Q
,Look at the'fifth entry on Page 27 of the new g
transcript.
A Yes.
g Q
could you read the-last.two sentences ~into the 15 record for us?
A I would rather just stay home.
If you have been-I 37 exp sed to enough radiation whenithey are evacuating, your la chance of being so close....
Q
.And, this -- in the new transcript, it's clear g
that the exposure that the person is referring to is from l
g evacuation, isn't it?
g A
Yes.
g Q
okay.
g A
This was a person who lived -- this happens to
.be the same person you spoke about before who said she would-e
71201010 3935 cuswalsh 1
take the gin and tonic who lived two miles from the plant, j
2 was advised to evacuate and said she wouldn't. evacuate under 3
any circumstances.
1 Q
Okay.
5 l
JUDGE FRYE:
Let me ask you'a question.
I'm 6
j beginning to get the feeling that in order to properly interpret the transcript or the tape you need to have been l
present at the actual' focus groups.
WITNESS COLE:
I feel that in analyzing it, it's l
10 very useful to be there which is why I did the moderation g
myself, bec,ause it is hard to follow and to know which l
person is which.
And, the only easy way to do it is if you j
are there.
But, I don't --
14 JUDGE FRYE:
That's why I aske_d if you had a 15 videotape, and you don't.
1 WITNESS COLE:
No.
It's too expensive.
17 l
JUDGE FRYE:
With a videotape, you might be able 1
to follow particular individuals, their remarks, as they go i
along.
l 20 l
WITNESS COLE:
The costs involved in doing videotapes are prohibitive.
It's very expensive.
Although I believe it's useful to be there in order to actually do a1 23 l
the analytis, to write up the analysis, I really don't think 1
24 I
it makes much difference as far as reading it over.
WITNESS SAEGERT:
I would like to comment on i
hl x
71201010-3936 guewalsh 1
that, too, since'I did use the transcripts in my testimony..
2 I think that what-you.have to'do, if you are going'to'do-3 that, to use the transcripts rather than having been'there',__
is to be rather conservative.'
5 I did exactly what Steve did, and-I also.had a research assistant'do it also' to be sure that'we were 7
picking up things that were dominant, that we were not'
.g picking out one person or one kind of remark out of' context.
And, so that meant going through these three g
,j transcripts at least four'.timest two people going through ~
them at lea,st four times and-being sure-that when we.pioked g
something out it was truly represent'ative.
And, that's what I find to be difficult about g
the mode of questioning'here, which is that it did not allow-is you to see that this is not one remark, but that there is a Wh le pattern of remarks.
And, I think.that if you would 17 l
read all of these ---and, in fact, in our testimony we quoted enough that you probably did read quite a bit'of it --
that you will see that we are not -- I did not pick out g
something that was not repeated in all focus groups for one g
criteria and also try to determine whether this is something g
that was being raised in different ways _by a number of g
different people, which you can kind.of tell by following g
through the transcript, because you begin to piece together 1
g their stories and they make reference again to'what they l
i
't
__.__a
71201010 3937 su;walsh I
have said previously and so on.
And, that's the kind of thing you have to do.
I
)
1 could probably not be as risky in my judgment as Steve, because he was there.
But, I don't think it's at all 5
j impossible for another person to interpret these.
WITNESS ROWAN:
Co'uld I elaborate on that for 7
just one second, because as someone who has been a reporter 8
j very often I both take notes and have a tape recorder 9
running.
MS MC CLESKEY:
Judge Frye, I object to Mr.
Rowan or Mr, Evans elaborating on anything about these i
transcripts.
They have both testified they have never read j
13 j
them and they did not listen to the tapes, and they are not l
on the answers about them.
15 JUDGE FRYE:
I think we had best limit it to the 16 witnesses who have been involved.
17 WITNESS COLE:
May I add to what Dr. Saegert said?
When you develop a theme from these transcripts, you have many, many quotes.
I mean, you can see that if you look at the testimony there are some pages that have two and three pages solid of various quotes from people.
We are not looking to pick out a sentence here or whatever.
Unless you havc a lot of people in all the groups saying the same you ignore it, or else you could have 100 themes.
We are looking for the basic sentiments of I
t:
}'
71201010 3938 suswalsh 1
these people, the basic way they felt when they heard.these 2
messages.
4 3
And, that's why any minor changes here and l
there, adding whether somebody would listen to a radio or 5
s mebody saying contradictory when another person said very 6
clear isn't going to make any difference, because you have l
7 1
s many different people saying the same thing in different a
words over and over again.
JUDGE PARIS:
After your transcriber prepared 10 this first version of this old transcription, did you Eay jj g
you went ov,er it and identified things that you knew had--
been said that were left out or changed things that had been said differently or something like that?
What did you say?
5 WITNESS COLE:
Yes.
I did not go over it listening to the tape piece by piece with the transcript.
j7 But, I listened to the tapes to make sure that all of it had g
been put on and then there were places in which it looked to
?
me wrong, since I had been there.
And, then I went back in 20 and tried to get the transcriber to do it over again and correct it.
And, we also cleaned up all the kinds of errors, typographical.
JUDGE PARIS:
You corrected it according to what 25 you remembered having been said?
I r!
1 i
I 71201010 3939 suowalsh-1 1
2 Nothing was put on there that WITNESS COLE:
j wasn't on the tape, but sometimes I would remember that it
~ was a comment.
For-example, I put one of Dr. Mileti's 4
hypotheses to these focus groups.
I said, you know, LILCO t
has claimed that people wouldn't leave'if there was a-l 6
)
nuclear emergency, that. the basic problem would. be to get 7
people to leave.
What do you think about this?
I 8
And, I remember looking at one of the first-drafts of the transcripts and I didn't find that on there.
So, I said something must have been wrong; she must have missed that,.
I told her to go back over that, and then we found that.
')
13 But, I did not do a line-by-line, inch-by-inch comparison.
And, the cost of doing that in time and money-would have been just much more than it's worth.
You. don't 3
16
]
gain much by -- maybe for some -- I' don't know, for some 17 other purposes it might be worthwhile, but for the purposes
,g of analyzing these kinds of data, it's just not done that i
19 j
w"y*
j 20 Most people take notes sometimes.
It's only recently that they even uce tape recorders.
Qualitative work used to be done by anthropologists and by sociologists taking down notes.
And, of course, they couldn't get exact verbatim transcripts, but some of the most famous and important work in cultural anthropology was done by people
1
-71201010 3940
,suewalsh-I taking notes.
It is only recently that we've had' tape 2
i recorders, and they;are a very substantial' advantage.
j 3
JUDGE FRYE:
Ms. McCleskey, it seems to me that pr bably these transcripts do speak for themselves.
I can't 5
imagine that there is going to be.any objection.to their 6
introduction, given their. source.
7 And, I don't know that we need really to take g
d the time unless you think there is something that'the witnesses can add that isn't reflected in the text of the i
g two transcripts.
- j
,,MS.
MC CLESKEY:
No, sir.
At this point, I'm i
g happy to stand on the text of the transcripts, given all of the discussion that.we have had.
g JUDGE FRYE:
Okay.
Let me, Professor Cole,-ask if -- you mentioned anthropology just now.
Is this focus group technique something that's fairly new, or.is this g
something that has been evolving over a period of years in 3g the field in general?
WITNESS COLE:
It's not new in the sense of the g
last ten years, but it probably wasn't done much before g
World War II.
It was developed mostly by people doing g
market research, and then it was started to be utilized by people doing other kinds of research.
The general approach of doing qualitative 3
interviews, in-depth interviews, is very old.
And, that I
io
1 71201010 3941 suswalsh I
goes back a long. time.
But, getting'a group o'f peopleL together and having them. discuss a topic probably was started after World War II when social science techniques started to be applied'to market research and other.
5 commercial --
JUDGE.FRYE:
I see.'
And, it.would have been 7
used in connection with surveys as you have used it here, I suppose?
WITNESS' COLE:
Yes.
10 JUDGE FRYE:
And it's, I' gather from what you say, a fair,1y accepted technique?
WITNESS COLE:
Oh, yes, definitely.
I mean, practically all companies when they introduce new products conduct lots'of focus groups.
They have'the product there; they have people come; they look at it, they talk about it-and they ask them questions about it.
Focus groups are done by political pollsters, g
for example, of Peter Hart.
The Democratic pollster constantly does focus groups that are reported in "The Wall-Street Journal."
He feels he can find out more by talking l
to 15 people in the mid-west, let's say, than by doing a big I
22 survey.
You can gain a lot of insight into how people l
feel and why they feel a certain way by actually getting 25 real people to sit there and talk-in an informal, open l
.!-i 1
i 71201010 3942-
-sucwalsh i
i-1 7
setting.
Frequently, you'have people observe them.-
2 It might be interesting to.-conduct another focus-3 group, and we could do it here on Long-Island _and you:could beerve them.
You could sit behind the one-way mirror.
5
_ e didn't use that, This is a faci]ity that they have here.
W 6
because we didn't have observers and we were tryina to 7
reduce costs.
a But, you can rent the focus group facility here 9
\\
on Long Island, a very nice facility in Great' Neck, and we
,g could conduct other focus groups.
And, the panel could sit-i, behind the,one-way mirror and observe them.
This is done g
all the time.
j 13 JUDGE FRYE:
Has anybody doneany work -- well, g
let me preface this, because it seems to me that perhaps what we are dealing with here in the work that you have done is somewhat different than a market survey, in'that -- to i
g take a mundane example, I can sit here and say:
Oh,.sure, I 18 will dive off the high dive but when I get up on the high g
i dive I might change my mind after looking at the height.
1 Has anyone done any work that would reveal how accurate the survey and the focus group results would be when it's conducted as it was here about a hypothetical l
emergency?
WITNESS COLE:
There is no way to precisely q
determine that.
As you know, there haven't been any other n
~.
71201010 3943' suawalsh I
nuclear emergencies other than Three Mile Island, so we' i
constantly come back to talk'ing about that.
i In that case, people did --
j JUDGE FRYE:
How about other emergencies?
I' mean, natural'-. hurricanes, what have you?
I don't'know whether this sort of work has been done in that context or 7
4 not.
8 WITNESS COLE:
.I am not. familiar with it.
9 Perhaps Dr. Saegert is.
I'm not sure.
MS. MC CLESKEY:
Judge Frye, may I make sure I f
g understand your question?
Your question.is whether anyone has gone back after an emergency having done a pre-emergency
(
survey?
No.
JUDGE FRYE:
It's basically a, validation question.
Have studies been validated in the sense that people have looked t surveys taken in a' hypothetical emergency situation and seen whether those results held true
,g 4
when the real emergency came along?
MS. MC CLESKEY:
For a particular emergency?
20 You would want it --
21 1
JUDGE FRYE:
It would alraost have to be, from 22 what the experts tell me.
WITNESS SAEGERT:
I don't think so.
Most 24 disaster research is post hoc.
It's conducted after the emergency.
l 1
i
_]
71201010 3944 i
.suowalsh 1
Ii' y u L 1 k at a lot of the' work that Dr. Mileti 2
has done.himself --
3 JUDGE FRYE:
I'm sorry, Doctor?
. WITNESS SAEGERT:
Dr. Mileti..has.done.and:.that
-5 he referred to the disaster'research. ' First._ o'f all,; it 's 3
qualitative and less systematic than what Dr. Cole did.-
M 7
Usually,-they go'in and speak to people who.were g
in some.way involved in the emergency.
If you read carefully their reports, they never specify their g
1 I
procedure.
They say this is what we found by talkingzto.
people who,were involved in the emergency and don't go; g
beyond that.
So, I think the real frame of reference is to see that Dr. Cole has gone~ further than is typical in disaster research in two ways.
One, by conducting polls which are quantitative and is a great step forward'over most 37 of the research which is post hoc, not predictive and much l
_ i3 of which is not quantitative, much of which is qualitative without describing the method.
g In the focus group, he then went far-enough to describe the method and to tell us -- and even have transcripts of what he actually said, whereas that-is not usually provided by much of the qualitative wor.k that's in 24 1 the -- kind of the. record in this area.
JUDGE FRYE:
From what you are saying, I'm i
f 1
il
-3
~
1 71201010 3945 suewalsh 1
getting the impression that this was the only instance in which someone has undertaken this kind of a study?
WITNESS SAEGERT:
A focus group study?
JUDGE FRYE:
No, no.
No, no.
A survey and focus group dealing with a hypothetical emergency situation and seeking to find.out how people would' react.
7 WITNESS SAEGERT:
As far as I know.
.8
' WITNESS ROWAN:
Excuse me'.
My firm has'done 9
those kinds of studies --
JUDGE FRYE:
Oh, have you?
g l
WITNESS ROWAN:
-- regarding chemical emergencies.
Yeah, we have a consulting firm that does survey research, although it has done none of the work that Dr. Cole has described.
But, we do focus groups, and we do i
15 media content analysis.
16 And, we've done it for a number of chemical 17 companies in community relation surveys to try to identify g
the problems that people would have and see how they would react to certain levels of emergency.
Now, fortunately, none of the clients that we have done work for have had a 21 spill so we could out if we predicted the reaction correctly.
But, we do have a benchmark if that happens in i
about 14 cities in the country now.
So, we will one day be able to at 1tast compare whether our methodology can be
.1
71201010 3946 suswalsh i
I predicted.
But, behavioral correlates is the hardest thing 2
to come up with.
3 One of the things you can do is, after you've done a study you can go back and try to find some of these 5
people and do more thorough questioning of them through either personal interviews'or bring them into a focus group 7
and find out if your quantitative survey has predicted g
things about their behavior.
That's very sophisticated and very expensive to
,g do, and it also requires that you kind of abandon a little bit the promises that this is an entirely random thing.
You g
can target certain sub-groups.
But, if you start doing too much of that -- for example, if you have a list of people g
that you know are particularly opposed to certain types of 33 industries and you phone them purposefully, you may be able l
to see if your questions could actually have predicted their l
viewpoint.
But, then you have to know what their viewpoints
,g are.
l And, some survey. researchers are very worried 20 about going across that line and actually targeting phone calls, for example, to people.
We don't do that.
Sub-g groups, yes; but, individuals, no.
g JUDGE FRYE:
The purpose of the work you are doing, I gather, is to advise your client es to what sort of g
I reaction they could expect in an emergency situation?
l h'
1 i
71201010 3947 cutwalsh-J l
WITNESS ROWAN:
And, moreover to gear their community relations program so that they can avoid that problem, so --
JUDGE FRYE:
I see.
5 i
WITNESS ROWAN:
-- that they can do the kind of communicating with the public, both through groups, through 7
political leadership, and through the mass media, so that I
8 1
they will avoid the kind of problems or at least facilitate 9
i the recovery if something does happen.
]
I WITNESS COLE:
I would like to point out one j
additional, thing.
I mean, the real aim of these studies, both the survey and the focus group is not to predict the behavior or individuals.
]
14 JUDGE FRYE:
No, I understand.
It's to predict 15 sort of --
16 WITNESS COLE:
Sort of a populati0n behavior.
So, even if there wasn't a very high correlation between what a particular individual said and what that person actually did if there were to be an emergency, the results
,0 4
of the survey could still be right.
In fact, if you look at it statistically, in order for there not to be a very broad evacuation shadow on Long Island, you would have to have a large negative correlation between what individuals say they will do and what they actually would do.
If you just look at the 4
- _- - -_ - _ x
i I
71201010 3948 -4048 suoualsh l
1 marginal distributions of what people said, even if there 2
1 was only a small positive correlation, you would still have j
3 a massive evacuation shadow.
5 l
6 7
8 9
10 i
11
~
12
/
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 i
l 21 22 23 24 25
.l.
4049 71201111 jonwalsh 1
WITNESS SAEGERT:
I think Mr. Cole clarified 2
it.
Most of it is in industry, and most of it is 3
proprietary, which is probably why there is less of it in 4
the public record, in the academic scholarly literature than 5
exists.
I think its validity is attested to mainly by the 6
amount of money spent on'it rather than the amount --
7 JUDGE PARIS:
Chemical companies don't want 8
people to know.
9 WITNESS ROWAN:
Actually, I have to take slight 10 issue with that.
What they want, the chemical industry, for 11 example, has gone out of its way now to set up voluntary 12 mechanisms to communicate risk to its neighbors, which in 13 itself carries some risk, because you are telling ther for 14 the first time about hazards that people may not have known 15
)
about.
j 16 This is a break from tradition, and yet that 17 risk for the industry is a better one to assume than to tell 18 them nothing because when something happens, ignorance
{
19 certainly is not bliss, and so involuntary actions like the i
20 com= unity awareness emergency response program of the 21 chemical manufacturers association, and in cooperative 22 ventures which led to Title 3 of the Super Fund Amendment, 23 which was just passed in the last session of congress, these 24 things have worked on trying to communicate risk to the 25 public, at least vis-a-vis chemicals and other hazards of
i l
l 71201111 4050 I
jo;walsh j
i i
I that sort.
2
)
So, while I agree with you in the past, I think l
3 i
that attitude ic changing.
4 1
JUDGE FRYE:
Would this be a good time to take 5
l our afternoon break?
6 MS. McCLESKEY:
Sure.
7 JUDGE FRYE:
Lets take a break for 15 minutes.
8 (Whereupon, afternoon recess was taken at 2:45 9
i j
p.m.,
to reconvene at 3:00 p.m.,
this same day.)
to l
JUDGE FRYE:
Are we ready to begin?
I have a I
11 few more questions.
Do you mind, Ms. McCleskey?
12 e
t MS. McCLESKEY:
Not at all.
l 13 JUDGE FRYE:
We were discussing the nature, I 14 suppose of the focus group technique, and I would like to 15 l
get your feeling if I could as to its verifiability as a l
16 general proposition.
17 In other words, if I wanted to duplicate your l
18 focus group experiment tomorrow, and went out and did so, it 19 would be a high probability that I would get the same l
20 results?
Is it verifiable in that sense, or not?
21 l
WITNESS COLE:
Definitely, definitely.
I would l
22 love to do that, in fact.
I would love to have this Court l
23 observe another focus group conducted in the same way.
We 24 would read the EBS messages.
We could use another 25 moderator or whatever, and I am positive that you -- well, i
p.
.71201111-4051
_joswalsh 1
you would get variations.
The: themes that.would emerge I 2
believe would be the same.
3 Maybe new theme would come up.:
If you have new d
people, you might get.some new thing, you might get some 5
different nuances..
6 But the basic themes that came up over and over 7
again I am sure would.come up if we.were to repeat'these-8 focus groups.
9 JUDGE SHON:
Is that independent of the 10 investigator and everything else?
I mean, if you had three 11 or four different investigators, all using similarly 12 selected groups, do you really believe that each would come 13 to the conclusion that there were, say, four dominant la themes, and they would all look the-same?
15 WITNESS COLE:
It may not be that close that' 16 there would be four dominant themes, but yes, I believe that 17 unless the person who did the group purposely tried to bias 18 it in a particular way, if you had a professional moderator 19 following professional ethical standards moderating these 20 groups, I am sure that they would come out the same.
21 JUDGE SHON:
How could a -- let me call it a 22 secondary evaluator, somebody that is looking at the d.sta, 23 how could such a person spot the hallmarks of the 24 professional evaluator so that you would know by reading the 25 transcript, let us say, that this person was being I
71201111 4052 joswalsh 1
. objective, and someone else.was not?
2 In other words,.how could I.go through here and 3
tell for sure that you weren't biasing the results?
4 WITNESS COLE:
You'would have to'see what I.
5 said.
Did I say things.that were negative ^about LILCO, or 6
ldid_I indicate in my talk'that I thought the messages were.
7 unclear or did I just ask:
What do you. thin'k?
Why.do_you 1
8 think that?
How come you feel'that way?- What would you do?--
9 What a moderator is' supposed to do.is 10 essentially just ask'these neutral questions to get the' 11 participants to. talk about them.
12
.s Now, sometimes a moderator will provide 13 information because of the context.
Like I said before, 14 that I told the people in at least one of the group that J.
15 l
Kessler was a LILCO employee, because I felt.that they would 16 have gotten that immediately anyway, that that would have 17 been part of the context.
18 And also, sometimes you are-involved in a j
19 t
discussion'and you might -- there might be a little 20
)
interaction between the moderator and some of the 21 i
participants, but you can tell whether or not a good job was 22 done by just reading over the transcripts and seeing what q
23 i
the moderator said.
24 When I do a focus group,.I make every possible-i 25 attempt to be neutral.
In fact, there were a lot of people g
1'
71201111
'4053
'joswalsh 1-i who thought that these groups were conducted by LILCO; 2
People came'up'atterwards, after the whole thing
]
3 was over, and we would talk to them, having coffee, and?they i
~
4
-i wculd say:
Did LILCO conduct these groups?: They felt that-i 5
1 LILCO had paid for the research, and conducted them, j
6 I would say the great 1 majority of the people ~had 7
no idea at all that they.were being paid'for by.the county, 8
and they were surprised when we' told them after the: group 9
was over that they were paid for'by Suffolk County.
10 So, I don't think that the people'in the groups 11 had any idea about what my personal' opinion or position 12
/
was.
a 13 l
I WITNESS SAEGERT:
Another thing you can do, 14 which I did in reading through them, is to pay particular 15 attention to the unprompted answers, like the ones that come.
16 right after the message, and'go down until you see that 17 there is some intervention.
18 Quite a bit of what did the message say 19 information comes without any prompt at all from Steve 20 There is no moderator involvement, and if you'can identify 21 those portions and compare them to the rest of the 22 transcript, you can get an idea about whether there was bias 23 being introduced or not.
24 WITNESS COLE:
Yes.
In fact, the moderator in 25 general wants to'say as little as possible.
So, the less
- = - _ _ - - - - - - -
-1'^-
'l a
71201111 4054-joswalsh I
you say, the'less you can influence what the group does.
2 The idea is to have the group. bring out the 3
4 So, frequently you will see:that it.is just issues.
subject, subject, subject, subject, and the moderator won't 1
5 interject anything.
6 Sn the other hand, sometimes the group-will go 7
off on a tangent.
They will start to. talk about the 1
8 Cyclotron at Brookhaven for ten minutes, and you don't want 9
them to. discuss something that is irrelevant, su) you might have to redirect their attention, so you just can't stay out i
II j
of it completely, but in general, the moderator should try 12 e
i to be neutral, and say as little as possible,.and you can 13 0
I look at the transcripts and determine how'successfully a 14 particular moderator was able to achieve that goal, although 15 there is no absolute way to measure it.
16 It has to be a qualitative'-assessment.
17 JUDGE FRYE:
So, I gather from.what you said so 18 far you pretty much run down all of the standards and I9 l
safeguards that govern this technique-at-this point.
I l
20 can't think of anything else, but maybe there are other j
21 things.
22 WITNESS COLE:
As far as I could accomplish it, 23 j
given the time constraints ~and the financial restraints that 24 we ha'd, I did this research in the most -- following all the 25 professional standards that I know of that exists to govern i
I l
-- - __ q 4
71201111 4055 jocwalsh I
this type of qualitative research.
j 2
JUDGE FRYE:
And the error rate that you are i
3 likely to come up with, if you replicated this particular 4
j exercise, would be, I gather, fairly substantial.
5 WITNESS COLE:
You mean the error rates in the 6
transcripts?
7 JUDGE FRYE:
No, no, no.
I mean in terms of 8
themes identified.
You.said four themes: well you might.not 9
get four themes the next time you did it.
You might get six i
10 or something like that.
11 WITNESS COLE:
It is quite possible, yes.
That 12 is why you want to do more -- you don't want to do only one 13 group.
You want to do several groups.
The more, the 14 better.
15 Fortunately, these are expensive, these groups, 16 you have to pay the participants, and it is a costly 17 procedure to do that.
But the more groups you do, the 18 better.
I If you can do ten groups, then you would feel 20 more confident.
So, we were able to do three with the time 21 and the financial resources that we had available.
22 JUDGE FRYE:
I see.
And you feel that that was 23 enough to reduce the error rate to something reasonable?
24 WITNESS COLE:
Yes.
When we did the research 25 for LILCO back in 1981, I forget if we did two or four.
It
71201111 4056 jo;walsh I
was either two or four groups.
Since they are so expensive, 2
~
you generally don't do a tremendous number unless you have a 3
big company that is introducing a major product that has a 4
lot of money to spend.
5 So, I normally do anywhere between two and four 6
groups.
I think that you can see that the same themes 7
appear in each of these groups.
You get some differences 8
between them.
There was one group that seemed to be more 9
antagonistic towards LILCO, more hostile, more angry.
10 Another group was not as angry.
You get some 11 differences.
It could depend upon having a particularly 12 e
strong person there.
You do get these interaction effects 13 between people, but when you look at the transcripts of 14 these three groups, you will see that the same themes appear 15 in each group.
16 When you look at my report, my testimony, you 17 will see that the quotes that I used for each theme are 18 drawn from all the different groups.
They are not just 19 drawn from one group, so there would be a quote from Group 20 1,
Group 2, Group 3.
21 JUDGE FRYE:
Do you set out in your appendix the 22 number of themes, or identify the particular themes that 23 were brought up by each of the three groups?
24 WITNESS COLE:
No, I did that in my testimony.
25 JUDGE FRYE:
You did that in the testimony.
O
?
L
{
I
-71201111 4007.
joswalsh 1
Okay.
Thanks very much..I:think that. completes the' Board's.
2 questions.on this particular topic.
3 MS. McCLESKEY:
My questions are completed as 4
well.
The remainder of my questions require Ms. Loftus.
5 JUDGE FRYE:
Mr. Zahnleuter?
6 MR. ZAHNLEUTER:
Would you prefer the Staff to 7
ask questions first?
8 JUDGE FRYE:
Well, I was just wondering.
9 MR. BARTH:
I think the normal-procedure, Your 10 Honor, has been for the Staff to go last, and I see-no-11 reason to change it now.
12 MR. ZAHNLEUTER:
All right.
I will go.
13 JUDGE FRYE:
Oh, excuse me.
Before you do, Ms.
14 l
McCleskey, do you want to move these exhibits into evidence?-
15 MS. McCLESKEY:
What is your pleasure? 1[
16 neglected to check the numbers to make sure they are 17 accurate.
I am happy to do it at the end of my ques'tioning 18 tomorrow.
19 JUDGE FRYE:
All right.
We will do it at the 20 end.
21 CROSS EXAMINATION 22 BY MR. ZAHNLEUTER:
23 Q
Okay.
I will be asking you some questions about' 24 your testimony, and I apologize in advance if I have to skip 25 around.
The disjointed nature of my questions are due,-in-
'I
~.. _ - -.. - _ _ - - _ _ _. -. - _ _ - _ _ -
G