Systematic reviews are now regarded as a key component of the decision making process in health care, and, increasingly, in other areas. This should also be true in disaster risk reduction, planning and response. Since the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, The Cochrane Collaboration and others have been working together to strengthen the use and usefulness of systematic reviews in this field, through Evidence Aid. Evidence Aid is conducting a survey to identify the attitudes of those involved in the humanitarian response to natural disasters and other crises towards systematic reviews and research in such settings; their priorities for evidence, and their preferences for how the information should be made accessible. This article contains an outline of the survey instrument, which is available in full from www.EvidenceAid.org. The preliminary findings of the survey will be published in future articles.