Understanding attitudes, concerns and reactions of the American
public is critical to emergency planning efforts and policy makers on all
levels. To have effective implementation of a disaster plan, people must
have confidence in the reliability of information from official sources,
capability of government to perform effectively in a crisis, and the capability
of response systems. Past disasters have revealed that large catastrophic
events will take a major toll on basic governmental services, and that they
will require individual citizens and their families to make quick decisions
in order to access important basic necessities like food, water, shelter
and access to communication. In this area, the NCDP focuses on: conducting
national and regional surveys to monitor attitudes towards preparedness,
confidence in government, and risk perception; measuring and mapping social
vulnerabilities as they relate to natural and human-made hazards; exploring
models of community engagement to enhance systems of community preparedness;
and increasing the citizen uptake of preparedness messaging by mitigating
barriers to citizen readiness and better understanding the psychosocial
dynamics of preparedness.
Projects:
American Preparedness Project:
For the past five years the NCDP has conducted an annual random digit dial telephone
survey of US residents’ attitudes and behaviors regarding disaster preparedness.
Findings include a decreasing trend in confidence in governmental and health
care institutions; a persistent discrepancy between perceived personal risk and
individual preparedness; and the critical role of psychological and social factors
such as self-efficacy, exposure to past disasters, and CPR or first-aid training
in explaining increased levels of preparedness, above and beyond perceived risk.
Family and Personal Preparedness:
What about the public? What should citizens do – or not do – at a time when threat
levels are raised and we are painfully reminded that living with a certain level
of risk is a reality of our times? Of course, this isn’t
a question of terrorism, alone. We are also concerned about natural disasters
or severe flu pandemics that are also capable of putting many people at great
risk.
