Focus On

To better address critical and timely topics with themes that span the Assessment chapters, NCA5 pioneered a new feature: a set of five “Focus on…” boxes on important cross-cutting issues. High-priority topics were nominated by authors during early development of the report; final topics were approved for inclusion by the Federal Steering Committee. Authors from multiple NCA5 chapters assessed literature, coordinated cross-report discussions, and contributed text and figures to these features.

Likelihood

Virtually Certain	Very Likely	Likely	As Likely as Not	Unlikely	Very Unikely	Exceptionally Unlikely
99%–100%	90%–100%	66%–100%	33%–66%	0%–33%	0%–10%	0%–1%

Confidence Level

Very High	High	Medium	Low
Strong evidence (established theory, multiple sources, well-documented and accepted methods, etc.) High consensus	Moderate evidence (several sources, some consistency, methods vary and/or documentation limited, etc.) Medium consensus	Suggestive evidence (a few sources, limited consistency, methods emerging, etc.) Competing schools of thought	Inconclusive evidence (limited sources, extrapolations, inconsistent findings, poor documentation and/or methods not tested, etc.) Disagreement or lack of opinions among experts

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