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6
Program Management and Support
As noted in earlier chapters, collection and processing of timely and
scientifically credible data for recreational fisheries is extremely chal-
lenging because of complex survey designs and measurement issues;
furthermore, these challenges are evolving over time. Many short-
comings in the current statistical system for marine recreational fisheries
have been identified in this report and in earlier reviews (e.g., National
Research Council, 2000, 2004).
Sampling and measurement methods used by the Marine Recre-
ational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS) are widely questioned, and
several states have opted out of the current national system, leading to
either a duplication of effort or difficulties in standardizing method-
ologies. Estimation methods do not take full advantage of modern statis-
tical techniques, particularly the use of auxiliary information.
RESEARCH NEEDS AND PROBLEM SOLVING
Currently, a great number of biases exist, and assumptions are made
because the sampling methodology is often inadequate to allow for
accurate data analysis. Therefore, research is needed to determine how
best to reduce biases and assumptions. Since data collection is not
supervised by an overarching group, research also needs to be done to
improve the accuracy of data collection.
Previous chapters outline the issues and concerns with the current
survey methods. A number of ideas have been suggested for circum-
venting or ameliorating these issues, including establishing a better
sampling frame, tracking individuals through a panel survey, making use
of auxiliary information where appropriate, and conducting experi-
107
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108 REVIEW OF RECREATIONAL FISHERIES SURVEY METHODS
ments to identify and account for biases and to estimate influential
factors that otherwise cannot be determined (e.g., the estimation of
release mortality rates). The hiring of additional fulltime statisticians
would increase the expertise within the statistical offices and would
improve data analysis and therefore fisheries management decision
making.
A NATIONAL STATISTICAL PROGRAM
The development of a national statistical program for marine
recreational fisheries data could be used to eliminate survey effort
redundancies. Such a program might consist of a federal agency, regional
and state offices, and an independent research group (IRG). The first two
of these components already exist, and their specific responsibilities
could be delineated to minimize duplication. Briefly, the federal agency
provides a nationally consistent statistical system, while the regional
offices offer on-the-ground expertise and implementation capability. The
third program component, which would be new, is necessary to ensure
sufficient staffing and other resources to implement changes, to develop
state-of-the-art design and estimation systems, and to anticipate and
adapt to evolving challenges. It is unlikely that a federal agency with so
many other responsibilities would be able to deal with these issues as
well. Since methods should not be reinvented region by region, regional
offices also should not have this responsibility.
Independent Research Group
An IRG with recognized expertise in theory and methods of survey
design; survey operations; human dimensions; and statistical estimation
techniques, including modern survey regression techniques, time series
analysis, and small area estimation, could revolutionize recreational
fisheries data extrapolation and understanding. The IRG should have a
proven record of research publication in the peer-reviewed literature, and
ideally, the IRG would have ready access to additional expertise in fields
like remote sensing, landscape ecology, cognitive science, computer
science, and economics. Such a structure would provide the flexibility to
anticipate and adapt to evolving challenges. Though a small number of
private research organizations might meet these constraints, the IRG
most likely would be a unit within a research university or consortium of
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PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT 109
universities. Such academic environments tend to produce research that
is innovative and of high quality because much of it is ultimately sub-
jected to rigorous peer review. Additionally, involvement of a research
group outside the federal agency should help to increase stakeholder
confidence in the statistical system.
This IRG would not be responsible for data collection or dissem-
ination and may or may not be responsible for online quality assurance
and production of estimates, but it should be in a position to interact
closely with other program components in these operations. This
interaction ensures that methods developed by the IRG are operationally
feasible and modifiable in real time, if necessary. Other responsibilities
of the IRG might include some or all of the following:
· Collaboration with the other program components on the
establishment of nationally consistent standards for design of
marine recreational fisheries surveys and for data and metadata
· Production of detailed sampling designs and data collection
protocols
· Thorough evaluation of existing sampling designs, data
collection protocols, and estimation techniques
· Technical documentation of all design, edit, imputation, and
estimation procedures and assistance to other program
components in explaining these methods to stakeholders
· Directed research on design and analysis to address specific data
needs and known challenges, including continuing evaluation of
developments in survey theory and methods that may have
application to recreational fisheries
· Basic research on new and innovative approaches to marine
recreational fisheries surveys and to the analysis of such survey
data
· Outreach to the scientific community through conference
presentations and peer-reviewed publications and to regional
offices on best statistical practices for marine recreational
fisheries
A model for such an IRG in a university setting is the statistical unit
supported by the large-scale, long-term cooperative agreement between
the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation
Service (NRCS) and the Iowa State University Statistical Laboratory.
NRCS and the statistical unit cooperate in producing the National
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110 REVIEW OF RECREATIONAL FISHERIES SURVEY METHODS
Resources Inventory (NRI), which is a stratified two-stage area sample
that provides information to support agricultural and environmental
policy development and program implementation (Nusser and Goebel,
1997; Breidt, 2002). In its current form, NRI is an annual rotating panel
survey designed to assess conditions and trends for soil, water, and
related natural resources on nonfederal lands of the United States (Breidt
and Fuller, 1999). The survey has evolved over a period of several
decades, and before adopting its current annual form, NRI was conducted
every five years, assessing conditions on each of approximately 800,000
sample points throughout the United States (U.S. Department of
Agriculture, 1999). Sample points are located in all counties and parishes
of the 50 states and in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the District of
Columbia, and selected portions of the Pacific Basin (Breidt, 2002). In
addition to providing monitoring information, NRI is used as a frame for
special studies conducted outside the normal sample rotation (e.g.,
wetland changes, soil quality).
The Iowa State University Statistical Laboratory provides technical
expertise on design and estimation for NRI. Specialized methodologies
have been developed at Iowa State for activities, such as editing,
imputation, small area estimation, and variance estimation. The relation-
ship between Iowa State and NRCS goes back many years, with
contracts renegotiated annually over most of that time. Most recently,
they moved to a five-year contract obtained in a competitive bidding
process.
The current five-year contract is about $10 million and is for design
and estimation with specific products, including an imputed dataset with
appropriate weights. The funding does cover design of data collection
protocols, including extensive interaction with three federal data
collection centers, but does not cover actual data collection. The contract
supports roughly 1.5 faculty, 12 professional and scientific staff (e.g.,
programmers, geographic information system [GIS] specialists, database
managers), 5 graduate research assistants, and parts of several admin-
istrative staff (e.g., accountants, secretaries). Four NRCS employees are
located at Iowa State to allow them to work with Iowa State staff and
participate in NRI design and estimation development, but these NRCS
employees are not supported by the contract. Because the contract is in
an academic department at a public research university, there is an
expectation that theoretical and methodological research arising from the
contract is broadly disseminated through scientific conferences and peer-
reviewed publications. Some of the contract funding is used explicitly to
support this dissemination.
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PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT 111
Two Science and Technology to Achieve Results (STAR) research
assistance agreements, which are awarded by the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to faculty members in the Departments of
Statistics at Colorado State University and Oregon State University,
provide another model for an IRG in a university consortium that sup-
ports an official statistical program. Additional key personnel are at other
agencies and universities. The two agreements focus on statistical issues
arising in the monitoring of aquatic resources, including lakes, streams,
and estuaries, with particular emphasis on the EPA's Environmental
Monitoring and Assessment Program and related programs. The agree-
ment primarily funded at Colorado State University is the Space-Time
Aquatic Resources Modeling and Analysis Program (STARMAP)
(Colorado State University, 2005), and the agreement primarily funded at
Oregon State University is Designs and Models for Aquatic Resource
Surveys (DAMARS) (Oregon State University, 2005). STARMAP is
somewhat more focused on estimation issues and DAMARS more on
design issues, but there is considerable overlap in the research programs,
particularly in small area estimation.
Unlike the Iowa State/NRI agreement, these STAR agreements do
not have specific deliverables like a weighted dataset. Instead, the
agreements primarily are aimed at pure methodological research. How-
ever, an explicit component of the agreements is outreach to federal,
state, and tribal agencies responsible for aquatic resources monitoring.
This outreach involves helping these agencies to implement the new
statistical methodologies developed under the STAR agreements. There
is considerable interaction with EPA scientists, primarily through short-
term visits. Each of the agreements is a $3 million, four-year contract
supporting faculty, graduate research assistants, and post-doctoral
research associates. The two STAR agreements are tied to one another
through subcontracts, joint annual meetings, and a common scientific
advisory committee.
Federal Agency
The role of a federal agency in a national statistical program can vary
from complete responsibility to coordination and oversight. Due to the
complexities of data collection, processing, and dissemination and to the
different scales of observed data, it is unlikely that a federal agency
could oversee and meet the needs of all parties adequately. A federal
agency is, however, ideally situated for ensuring a nationally consistent
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112 REVIEW OF RECREATIONAL FISHERIES SURVEY METHODS
statistical system and for setting standards to be coordinated among the
different offices. Specific responsibilities of the federal agency might
include some or all of the following:
· Management of the overall program to ensure proper collabor-
ation between the IRG and regional and state offices
· Coordination with states or regional offices, including regional
fishery management councils, on problems of mutual interest,
such as creation and maintenance of a national list frame of
marine anglers for efficient sampling and outreach programs
· Collaboration with the other program components on establish-
ment of nationally consistent standards for design of marine
recreational fisheries surveys and for data and metadata (possibly
including training of access site data collectors to ensure national
consistency)
· Cooperation with other program components on quality assur-
ance and quality control for collected data
· Cooperation with the IRG in the processing of data and produc-
tion of estimates
· Maintenance of a central data warehouse for marine recreational
fisheries and development of appropriate dissemination tools
· Outreach to national-level stakeholders, including organizing
data product reviews by user groups, providing information to
national media, and providing education to policy makers
· Solicitation of feedback on data needs from user groups, such as
scientists, policy makers, and managers
· Collection of information from scientists, managers, and data
collectors on evolving challenges in marine recreational fisheries
surveys
· Communication of data needs and evolving challenges to the
IRG
· Sponsorship of directed research on design and analysis to
address specific data needs and known challenges
· Sponsorship of basic research on new and innovative approaches
to marine recreational fisheries surveys and to the analysis of
such survey data
One final responsibility that may fall to the federal agency is solici-
tation of formal scientific reviews of the entire statistical program for
marine recreational fisheries. Such reviews could be done on an ad hoc
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PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT 113
basis possibly through standing committees. Models for such committees
include those maintained by the American Statistical Association (ASA).
These standing advisory committees meet periodically to advise federal
statistical agencies (American Statistical Association, 2006a). Current
examples include the Census Advisory Committee, the Committee on
Law and Justice Statistics (advisory panel for the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, among other responsibilities), and the Committee on Energy
Statistics (advisory panel for the Energy Information Administration
[EIA]).
The latter committee is a good example of an ASA advisory
committee. EIA is an independent statistical agency within the U.S.
Department of Energy. The ASA Committee on Energy Statistics is
supported by a line item in EIA's annual budget. This support is admin-
istered by ASA. The committee meets twice a year and advises EIA on a
broad range of issues, not only on data gathering, data quality, and
modeling, but also on strategic planning and stewardship of EIA's
reputation in the scientific community. At each meeting, EIA updates the
committee on its use of the committee's advice. The committee consists
of a chair plus 12 members, including a balance of mathematical
statisticians, survey methodologists, economists, energy modelers, and
policy analysts. The committee's composition is dictated by the broad
range of issues on which EIA needs advice: data collection, data presen-
tation, energy modeling, economics, and policy analysis. Committee
members serve rotating three-year terms with an option to renew for a
second three-year term at the discretion of ASA and EIA.
Regional and State Offices
As opposed to the previous duties, maintaining access site list frames
for catch per unit effort estimation would be accomplished at the regional
or state level. Since local expertise on topics like geography, fishing
modes, and species variation is essential, data collection is best done at a
local level. Additional benefits to having state or local personnel conduct
the intercept surveys include better training, the formation of an
interviewerangler relationship, and a larger sample size. These benefits
would come with higher costs, but survey reliability, data quality,
analysis, and credibility would increase. Even with outstanding local
expertise, access site list frames have a number of potentially serious
deficiencies as outlined in earlier chapters and should, where possible, be
supplemented with area samples or other dual-frame techniques to get at
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114 REVIEW OF RECREATIONAL FISHERIES SURVEY METHODS
catch per unit effort for anglers not accessing the water from listed public
access points. The IRG could assist in designing appropriate supple-
mentary samples. Other responsibilities of the regional offices might
include some or all of the following:
· Coordination with the federal agency on problems of mutual
interest, such as creation and maintenance of a national list frame
of marine anglers
· Collaboration with the other program components on the
establishment of nationally consistent standards for design of
marine recreational fisheries surveys and for data and metadata
· Collection of data, primarily from angler intercepts at access
sites, which ideally would be done with a dedicated staff of state
employees to ensure quality and continuity in the data
· Cooperation with other program components on quality assur-
ance and quality control for collected data
· Communication of data needs and evolving challenges to a
federal agency and the IRG
· Outreach to local user groups, including communication with
individual anglers at access sites
INTERIM SOURCES OF PROGRAM SUPPORT
Establishment of the outlined three-component statistical system for
marine recreational fisheries will take time and resources. In the interim,
other sources of much-needed technical support should be considered.
Many federal agencies directly support relevant statistical research on a
short-term basis (one to three years) through contracts and grants, such as
EPA STAR grants, Research Joint Venture Agreements from the U.S.
Forest Service, and cooperative agreements with the U.S. Census Bureau
or the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. These may be based on broadly
advertised requests for proposals or may be directed by the agency to a
particular researcher or group.
Another mechanism by which federal agencies support academic
researchers doing relevant research on survey methods is through the
Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics Program (MMS) in the
Division for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research of the National
Science Foundation (NSF). MMS works in collaboration with a
consortium of federal statistical agencies represented by the Interagency
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PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT 115
Council on Statistical Policy and the Federal Committee on Statistical
Methodology. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is
considered a federal statistical agency and is a member of the Federal
Committee on Statistical Methodology.) MMS can fund relevant
research in two ways: (1) directly through a call for proposals on topics
of interest to the federal agencies or (2) indirectly through scanning
proposals to other NSF programs (notably pertaining to statistics and
probability in the Division of Mathematical Sciences) and jointly funding
those of interest to the federal agencies.
According to a recent call for proposals, MMS invited research
proposals
...that further the development of new and innovative
approaches to surveys and to the analysis of survey
data... Although proposals submitted in response to this
solicitation may address any aspect of survey
methodology, priority will be given to basic research
proposals that are interdisciplinary in nature, have broad
implications for the field in general, and have the
greatest potential for creating fundamental knowledge of
value to the Federal Statistical System. Because
methodological problems often require knowledge and
expertise from multiple disciplines, collaborations are
especially encouraged among the relevant sciences,
including the social sciences, linguistics, cognitive
science, statistics, computer science, and economics.
(National Science Foundation, 2005)
Such a call could be directly relevant to the development of survey
methods for marine recreational fisheries.
One other useful means of providing interim technical support to the
statistical program is to bring short-term academic visitors into the
federal agency through a formal fellowship program. ASA joins with
NSF and various federal statistical agencies in supporting the
ASA/NSF/Federal Statistics Fellowship program (American Statistical
Association, 2006b). The program brings academic researchers into the
federal agencies for up to one year for the purpose of fostering
collaborative research efforts on methodology relevant to the agencies.
The roles of ASA and NSF in the fellowship program include advertising
the fellowships to the relevant audience, forming the committee that
reviews the applicants, and lending prestige to the fellowship awards.
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116 REVIEW OF RECREATIONAL FISHERIES SURVEY METHODS
Agencies that have participated in the ASA and NSF fellowship
program have included the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census
Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the National Center for
Education Statistics. Similar research programs have been jointly
sponsored (without NSF) by ASA and the National Center for Health
Statistics, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, and EIA.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
A large number of complex technical issues associated with sur-
veys of marine recreational fishing remain unsolved, and a sig-
nificant investment in intellectual and technical expertise therefore is
needed. Research is required to determine how best to reduce biases and
assumptions and to improve the accuracy of data collection. To address
these needs additional fulltime statisticians should be hired by the
MRFSS. A research group of statisticians should design new anal-
yses based on current developments in sampling theory (as outlined
in Chapter 3). These examinations should include experimentation, such
as specific sampling of activities like night fishing or fishing from
private property, whose current underrepresentation in the MRFSS
sampling has the potential to create bias.
A greater degree of coordination between federal, state, and oth-
er survey programs is necessary to achieve the national perspective
on marine recreational fisheries that is needed. The committee
recommends the development of a national statistical program that might
consist of three components: a federal agency, regional and state offices,
and an IRG. A permanent and independent research group should be
established and funded to continuously evaluate the statistical design
and adequacy of recreational fishery surveys and to guide necessary
modifications or new initiatives. Human dimensions expertise should
be included as well. The recommended changes to the design and
operation of the MRFSS and its continued development and
operation will require additional funding above current levels. In the
interim, the committee recommends that other sources of funds be
considered for the technical assistance that is needed immediately for the
MRFSS.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
intercept surveys
