Windshield Survey Nursing Examples: Community Health Survey Samples and Guide

Most nursing students already know the textbook definition of a windshield survey. The part that actually stalls people is more practical: What exactly am I supposed to observe and write down?

This article answers that question with real examples: housing, physical environment, transportation, food access, healthcare resources, schools, recreation, safety, businesses, social services, environmental conditions, community assets, and potential health concerns. Every section works from a concrete observation toward what a nursing student does with it, not just a definition.

If you’re looking for the fuller picture of windshield surveys and community assessment, including the underlying frameworks and theory, our complete windshield survey and community assessment guide covers that in depth. This article is the companion piece: fewer definitions, more windshield survey nursing examples you can actually use while you’re working through your own assignment.

What Is a Windshield Survey in Nursing?

A windshield survey is a structured form of direct observation nurses use to gather information about a community’s physical, social, environmental, and health-related characteristics, typically conducted by driving, walking, or virtually moving through a defined area (McCarthy, 2021; Rabinowitz, n.d.). As a windshield survey community health nursing method, it is one input into a broader community assessment, not a replacement for demographic, epidemiological, or other secondary data (Guin, 2020).

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A community health windshield survey tells you what a neighborhood looks like on a given day. It does not, by itself, tell you the community’s asthma rate, its median household income, or its actual crime statistics. Strong nursing assessments treat windshield observations as a starting point for questions, then confirm or expand on those questions with real data. Our windshield survey and community assessment guide walks through that broader assessment process in more detail; this article focuses specifically on what to observe and how to write it up.

What Should You Look for During a Nursing Windshield Survey?

Random note-taking produces a messy write-up. Working through defined categories produces something you can actually organize into a paper or presentation. Here’s a practical windshield survey sample for nursing students to work from, category by category.

Physical Environment

Look at housing condition, vacant buildings, sidewalks and street condition, lighting, drainage, visible sanitation issues, litter, indicators of air quality (industrial facilities, visible emissions, heavy traffic corridors), noise level, parks and green space, obvious environmental hazards, and general accessibility for people using mobility devices.

Housing and Neighborhood Conditions

Observation: “Most residential properties appeared well maintained, although several vacant properties had overgrown yards and deteriorating exterior structures.”

What this may suggest: Clusters of vacant or deteriorating properties can be associated with reduced community investment and, in some research, with worse self-reported health outcomes for nearby residents. That’s a pattern worth investigating further, not a conclusion to state outright. The observation is what you saw; the health significance is a hypothesis you’d want to support with additional data, such as code enforcement records or municipal housing data.

This distinction, what was observed versus what the observation may mean for community health, is the single most important habit to build into every category below.

Transportation

Note public transportation availability, bus stop locations and condition (covered seating, visible schedules), sidewalk continuity, bicycle infrastructure, traffic volume and speed, parking availability, and whether the built environment appears usable for older adults and people with disabilities.

Food Access

Look at supermarkets, convenience stores, farmers markets, fast-food density, and general visible availability of fresh produce. Be careful here: do not label a community a “food desert” based on a drive-through observation alone. Food access is a specific, defined measure that typically requires distance-to-retailer data and income data together; a windshield impression can raise the question, but shouldn’t answer it on its own.

Healthcare and Social Services

Note hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, urgent care centers, behavioral health services, community centers, social service agencies, senior services, and any visible public health department presence.

Schools and Education

Observe schools, libraries, childcare facilities, and any visible adult education resources, along with general accessibility (sidewalks to schools, visible crossing guards or crosswalks near school zones).

Recreation and Community Resources

Look for parks, playgrounds, walking trails, sports facilities, community centers, and any signage for recreational programs.

Safety and Security

Note street lighting, visible crosswalks, traffic patterns near pedestrian areas, and proximity to emergency services. Be careful not to equate an older or economically distressed appearance with a “less safe” community; document what you actually observed (lighting, crosswalk presence, posted speed limits) rather than an impression.

Windshield Survey Sample for Nursing

The table below is an illustrative example, not a real community assessment or an actual student submission. Use it as a model for the level of detail and the observation-to-significance structure your own table should have.

Notice that every “potential health significance” column stays in hedged, hypothesis-generating language. That’s intentional and academically appropriate; it’s the same posture your own table should take.

Windshield Survey Community Assessment Example

This section shows how individual observations combine into a fuller community assessment. The community below, Riverbend Community, is fictional and created for illustration only.

Community overview: Riverbend is a mixed-income residential and commercial area with a mix of single-family homes, a small apartment complex, and a commercial corridor running through the center of the survey area.

Physical environment: Sidewalks were present but inconsistently maintained; one small public park was observed near the residential section.

Housing: Most homes appeared maintained; a cluster of four vacant properties was noted on one block.

Transportation: Two bus routes served the corridor; several stops lacked shelter or seating.

Food resources: One grocery store and a weekly farmers market were observed, alongside four fast-food locations.

Healthcare access: One urgent care clinic was visible; no behavioral health signage was observed within the surveyed area.

Education: One elementary school with an active crossing guard program.

Recreation: A public park with a walking path and playground, moderately utilized during the observation period.

Safety: Adequate lighting on the main corridor; inconsistent lighting on side streets.

Social services: A community center with posted programming.

Community strengths: An active farmers market, a used public park, an existing school crossing-guard program, and a mix of locally owned businesses.

Potential health concerns: Limited visible behavioral health access, inconsistent sidewalk and lighting conditions on side streets, and a fast-food-to-grocery ratio worth further investigation.

Areas requiring additional investigation: Local health department service directories (behavioral health access), municipal infrastructure data (sidewalks/lighting), and retail food environment data (grocery versus fast-food density).

The reasoning path that produced this summary looked like this:

Observation (four vacant homes on one block) → Interpretation (possible disinvestment or reduced housing stability in that block) → Supporting data needed (code enforcement or vacancy records) → Community health concern (potential association with reduced community-level resources, pending confirmation).

That four-step chain, observation, interpretation, supporting data, community health concern, is the core structure your instructor is almost always grading for, whether or not the rubric spells it out that plainly.

Community Windshield Survey Example

Individual bullet points are useful for note-taking; they’re weaker for a finished paper. Here’s how several Riverbend observations look once they’re synthesized into academic prose instead of listed separately:

The Riverbend commercial corridor reflected a mixed economic profile, with several long-standing, locally owned businesses operating alongside a noticeable number of vacant storefronts. Combined with a cluster of vacant residential properties on an adjacent block, this pattern suggests uneven economic conditions across the surveyed area rather than uniform decline. Transportation infrastructure along the corridor, including two active bus routes, provides a meaningful community asset, although several stops lacked covered seating, a detail that may disproportionately affect older adults and residents managing chronic health conditions who rely on public transit. Taken together, these observations point toward a community with identifiable strengths and specific, investigable gaps, rather than a uniformly under-resourced or well-resourced area.

Notice what this paragraph does: it groups related observations (vacant storefronts and vacant housing) instead of listing them separately, it names a specific population potentially affected by a specific finding (older adults, bus shelter), and it avoids declaring a verdict about the whole community.

Example of Windshield Survey Paper

A typical windshield survey paper follows a structure similar to this. Section lengths vary by assignment, but the sequence below is a reasonable default, and it’s a model for organization and analysis, not a paper to submit as your own.

1. Introduction: State the purpose of the assessment and identify the community by general boundaries (without necessarily naming a real, identifiable location if your program requires de-identification).
2. Community Description: Brief overview: type of area, general size, and context.
3. Physical Environment
4. Housing
5. Transportation
6. Food and Retail Resources
7. Healthcare Resources
8. Education
9. Recreation
10. Safety
11. Community Strengths
12. Potential Health Concerns
13. Additional Data Needed
14. Conclusion: Summarize the priority concern(s) and what they suggest for nursing practice or intervention planning.

Sample paragraph, Community Strengths section (illustrative):

Riverbend’s identifiable strengths include an active weekly farmers market, a maintained public park with a walking path, and an established school crossing-guard program. These assets represent existing infrastructure that a community health intervention could build on directly, rather than resources that would need to be created from scratch.

Sample paragraph, Additional Data Needed section (illustrative):

While the windshield survey identified a potential gap in visible behavioral health access, this observation alone is insufficient to confirm an actual service gap. Confirming this finding would require review of the local health department’s service directory and, where available, county-level behavioral health utilization data.

How to Write a Windshield Survey for a Community Health Nursing Assignment

Step 1: Define the Community

Establish clear geographic boundaries, by zip code, school district, census tract, or another defined unit, before you start. A survey without defined boundaries is hard to write up coherently.

Step 2: Review Existing Data

Don’t start cold. A quick look at available demographic or health data (Census Bureau data, local health department reports) gives you context for what you’re about to observe and helps you notice things that matter.

Step 3: Create an Observation Checklist

Use the category list from earlier in this article, or the template below, so you’re recording information systematically rather than writing down whatever catches your eye first.

Step 4: Conduct the Survey Safely

Whether you’re driving, walking, or using a virtual tool, prioritize personal safety and privacy. Do not photograph identifiable individuals without appropriate consent or authorization, and follow your program’s specific guidance on conducting field observations.

Step 5: Record Objective Observations

Write down what you actually saw, using neutral, descriptive language. “Three vacant storefronts observed on Main Street” is objective. “This block looks rundown” is not.

Step 6: Identify Community Assets

Actively look for strengths, not just problems. A parks department program, an active neighborhood association, or a well-used community center are all real findings, and most rubrics specifically ask for them.

Step 7: Identify Potential Health Concerns

Use your observations to flag areas that warrant further investigation, phrased as questions or hypotheses rather than conclusions.

Step 8: Validate Findings With Data

Cross-check what you observed against reliable community-level data sources (more on this below) before you present a finding as more than a visual impression.

Step 9: Connect Findings to Nursing

Explain what your findings could mean for health promotion, disease prevention, health education, advocacy, or a specific community intervention. This is usually where analysis-focused rubric points live.

Step 10: Write and Present the Findings

Organize your final paper or presentation around the structure above, leading with your priority concern rather than burying it in a list of everything you saw.

Windshield Survey Template Community Health Students Can Use

Adapt this windshield survey template to your specific instructor’s rubric before using it for an actual assignment; categories and columns should match what you’re actually being asked to submit.

Sentinel City Physical Environment: What Should Nursing Students Observe?

Many community health nursing programs use Sentinel City, a virtual simulation platform, for a windshield-survey-style assignment when an in-person community observation isn’t feasible for every student. Sentinel City is a simulated learning environment, not an actual geographic community, and its data and citizens are constructed for educational purposes.

The observation logic is the same as an in-person survey: housing, roads, transportation, businesses, parks, healthcare facilities, schools, sanitation, environmental hazards, safety, and community resources are all represented within the simulation and can be documented using the same category structure used throughout this article.

Research evaluating Sentinel City across multiple nursing programs found that the platform supported students’ development of observation and community-assessment skills in a controlled, standardized setting (Chircop et al., 2022). The distinction between a visible observation and a conclusion requiring supporting data still applies inside the simulation; a Sentinel City physical environment feature is a data point, not a finding, in the same way a real storefront or vacant lot is. If your assignment references specific Sentinel City requirements, confirm the current version and specific task details with your own course materials rather than older student-generated guides, since simulation content is updated periodically.

Windshield Survey Scholarly Articles and Reliable Sources

A windshield survey is a primary observational method: it’s information you personally gathered, in real time, through your own senses. That’s valuable, but it has real limits. Windshield observations should not be used alone to establish prevalence, incidence, causation, or population-level health conclusions (Guin, 2020).

Secondary community health data fills that gap. Useful, credible sources include:

• Peer-reviewed nursing and public health literature
• The CDC’s PLACES dataset, which provides model-based health measures down to the census-tract level (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024)
• AHRQ’s Social Determinants of Health Database, which compiles federal data on social determinants at the county, ZIP code, and census tract level (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2023)
• Healthy People 2030’s social determinants of health objectives and literature summaries (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, n.d.)
• U.S. Census Bureau / American Community Survey data
• State and local health department reports

The practical rule: a windshield observation tells you where to look; secondary data tells you what’s actually there. A strong community assessment uses both, and clearly distinguishes which claims come from which source.

How to Use Windshield Survey Findings in Community Health Nursing

Windshield survey findings feed directly into the nursing process applied at a population level: they can inform a community nursing diagnosis, shape health promotion and disease prevention priorities, guide health education content, support population health planning, help identify resources and potential partnerships, and inform advocacy efforts directed at a specific, observed gap.

This is also where windshield survey findings connect most directly to broader health promotion and population health work: an observation becomes genuinely useful once it’s tied to a specific population-level action, not just documented and left in a table.

How Windshield Surveys Connect to Community Teaching Plans

A windshield survey is frequently the starting point for a separate but related assignment: the community teaching plan. The typical progression looks like this:

Windshield survey → identified community need → supporting evidence → target population → teaching intervention → evaluation.

If your Riverbend-style assessment identified a potential gap in behavioral health visibility, for example, that finding, once supported with actual service-gap data, could reasonably become the foundation for a teaching intervention aimed at increasing awareness of existing (but underutilized) behavioral health resources. If you’re working on that next step, our community teaching plan guide walks through how to build a full teaching plan from a need like this one.

Windshield Survey and Epidemiology in Community Health Nursing

Windshield observations and epidemiological data answer different questions, and strong papers use both without confusing them. A windshield survey can help you identify a question worth investigating, such as a possible food-access gap or a cluster of vacant housing. Epidemiological data helps establish the actual magnitude and distribution of a health problem, whether it’s genuinely elevated compared to a comparison area, and whether it’s changing over time.

If your assignment asks you to connect observational findings to population-level health data more formally, our epidemiology and community health guide covers how to pair the two appropriately.

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How to Turn a Windshield Survey Into a Community Health Presentation

A windshield survey PowerPoint presentation generally works best with 8 to 12 focused slides:

1. Title
2. Community overview
3. Physical environment
4. Housing
5. Transportation
6. Food and healthcare resources
7. Community strengths
8. Potential health concerns
9. Supporting epidemiological/community data
10. Priority concern
11. Recommended intervention
12. References

Keep individual slides to one main idea each. A slide packed with every observation from your windshield survey is harder to present and harder for an audience to follow than a slide that states one finding, backs it briefly with a photo or a short data point (where photographs and data use is permitted by your assignment), and moves on. Save the full detail for your paper or speaker notes, not the slide itself.

Common Mistakes Students Make in Windshield Surveys

• Describing everything without analyzing it. Correction: for each observation, ask “so what?” before moving to the next one.
• Making assumptions based on appearance. Correction: separate what you observed from what you’re inferring, every time.
• Confusing observation with evidence. Correction: treat windshield findings as hypotheses to check against real data, not conclusions.
• Ignoring community strengths. Correction: actively look for assets; most rubrics grade for this explicitly.
• Failing to define the geographic area. Correction: state your boundaries in the first paragraph.
• Relying exclusively on visual observations. Correction: pair your survey with at least one credible secondary data source.
• Using outdated statistics. Correction: check publication and data-collection dates, not just the source’s name recognition.
• Failing to connect findings to health. Correction: every major observation should lead somewhere, toward a concern, a strength, or a question.
• Failing to cite supporting sources. Correction: cite wherever you make a claim beyond what you personally observed.
• Copying a sample survey instead of conducting one. Correction: examples like the ones in this article are for structure and tone, not content to reuse.
• Treating a template as a completed assignment. Correction: a template organizes your own data; it isn’t a substitute for gathering it.
• Overlooking the assignment rubric. Correction: check the rubric before you start writing, not after you’re done.
• Making unsupported claims. Correction: if you can’t support it with a source or your own direct observation, soften the language or leave it out.
• Ignoring safety and privacy considerations. Correction: follow your program’s guidance on personal safety and on photographing identifiable people or private property.

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FAQs About Windshield Survey Nursing Examples

What is an example of a windshield survey in nursing? A common example is observing a residential block and noting housing condition, vacant properties, sidewalk quality, and visible green space, then connecting those observations to a potential health implication, such as walkability or housing stability, while flagging what additional data would confirm it.

What should be included in a nursing windshield survey? At minimum: physical environment, housing, transportation, food access, healthcare and social services, schools, recreation, safety, businesses, and any visible community assets or potential health concerns.

How do you write a windshield survey for community health nursing? Define your community boundaries, review existing data first, use a structured observation checklist, record objective (not interpretive) language, identify both strengths and concerns, and validate your findings against credible secondary data before finalizing your write-up.

What is a windshield survey sample for nursing students? A worked example showing realistic observations organized by category, typically alongside a note on the observation’s potential health significance and what additional data would be needed, similar to the table earlier in this article.

What is the difference between a windshield survey and a community assessment? A windshield survey is one data-collection method, direct observation, used within a broader community assessment, which also typically includes demographic, epidemiological, and other secondary data. The windshield survey answers “what does this look like”; the full assessment answers “what does this mean for community health.”

Can I use a windshield survey template for a community health assignment? Yes, as a starting structure. Adapt the categories and columns to match your specific instructor’s rubric before submitting anything based on a template.

What should a windshield survey paper include? Typically an introduction, community description, category-by-category findings (physical environment, housing, transportation, food, healthcare, education, recreation, safety), community strengths, potential health concerns, additional data needed, and a conclusion identifying your priority concern.

What should I include in a windshield survey PowerPoint? A focused 8 to 12 slide structure covering community overview, key findings by category, strengths, potential health concerns, supporting data, your priority concern, and a recommended intervention, with one main idea per slide.

What is the Sentinel City physical environment? The simulated built environment, housing, roads, businesses, parks, healthcare facilities, and more, within the Sentinel City virtual simulation platform, used by some nursing programs to practice windshield-survey-style observation skills in a standardized virtual setting rather than an actual geographic location.

How do I turn windshield survey observations into a community health concern? Follow the observation to interpretation to supporting data to community health concern sequence: state what you saw, propose what it might mean, identify the data that would confirm or rule that out, and only then frame it as an actual concern worth addressing.

Conclusion

Windshield survey nursing examples are most useful when they show the full reasoning path, not just a list of things someone noticed from a car window. Observe specific, defined categories; keep observation and interpretation clearly separate; look for community strengths as deliberately as you look for concerns; and validate anything beyond a direct observation against real secondary data before you present it as a finding. That structure, more than any single example, is what turns a windshield survey into an academically credible community assessment.

For the deeper framework behind community assessment as a whole, our windshield survey and community assessment guide is the place to go next.

References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2023). Social determinants of health database. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.ahrq.gov/data/innovations/sdoh.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). About PLACES: Local data for better health. https://www.cdc.gov/places/about/index.html

Chircop, A., Cobbett, S., Schofield, R. E., Boudreau, C., Egert, A., Filice, S., Harvey, A., Kall, D., & MacDougall, L. (2022). Multi-jurisdictional evaluation of Sentinel City virtual simulation for community health nursing clinical education. Quality Advancement in Nursing Education, 8(4), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.17483/2368-6669.1352

Guin, N. B. (2020). Windshield and walking surveys in community health nursing. International Journal of Science and Research, 9(11), 523 to 525. https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v9i11/SR201022161001.pdf

McCarthy, S. (2021). What is a windshield survey? Washtenaw Community College Library. https://libguides.wccnet.edu/nur130/windshield_survey

Mulcahy, H., & Downey, J. (2021). Community profiling and health needs assessment: A practical guide for public health nurses (5th ed.). University College Cork and HSE Nursing and Midwifery Planning and Development Unit. https://cora.ucc.ie/handle/10468/12050

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (n.d.). Social determinants of health. Healthy People 2030, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://odphp.health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health

Rabinowitz, P. (n.d.). Windshield and walking surveys. Community Tool Box, University of Kansas. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/windshield-walking-surveys/main