The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
The text below is a portion of the complete document.
Data Needs for Studies of Emergency Services Responses to Disasters: A Research Guide*
Purpose
Evaluators and others studying what happens to victims of major disasters—such as earthquakes, floods, September 11-type incidents, or Hurricane Katrina-like catastrophes—must begin with a comprehensive understanding of victim services needs under such extraordinary circumstances. Based on that understanding, desired service outcomes and associated indicators will need to be constructed. To assist in the development of such research, this guide provides a series of starting, generic checklists of outcome indicators and related information considered pertinent to studying emergency services responses. The indicators cross a range of critical service areas and cover a wide array of conditions likely to be important to disaster victims, allowing for
assessment of the extent to which victim services needs are met during and following disasters.
Studies of services responses are likely to address questions about the type, timing, and adequacy of the responses, as well as about who delivered (or failed to deliver) various services. Thus, included here are both a starter set of indicators relating to the quality of service provision and a start at identifying information on the characteristics of the various service interventions. Because outcome findings will be considerably more useful if broken out by key victim demographic characteristics, we have also provided a starter-set of such characteristics.
Together, the respective sets of outcome indicators, responding services characteristics, and demographic characteristics are intended to serve as a guide and checklist for future evaluations and other studies that
- provide feedback on how successful the responses are to major emergencies;
- provide a baseline against which responses to various emergencies can be
compared;
- help identify improvements needed by service-providing organizations and the
government in responding to major emergencies; and
- help identify the types of service responses likely to be most helpful to particular
demographical subgroups.
Each evaluation or other study of services responses to disasters will need to be tailored to the unique, special coverage characteristics and scope of a particular emergency. Hence, each would likely (a) require only some of the outcome indicators, demographic and situational characteristics data, and responding services characteristics data listed here; (b) need additional detail; or (c) necessitate unique indicators or data not yet identified. An example of the latter would involve a terrorist attack using biological agents, which might call for provision to the public of gasmasks, protective pharmaceuticals, and the like, and require indicators of the extent to which these were provided in a timely and correct manner. That notwiths tanding, this guide is intended to be helpful in the initial stages of designing any assessment of the quality or effects of services responses by identifying information needs that are reasonably common and basic across major emergency situations.
The intended audiences for the guide include private emergency responding organizations such as the American Red Cross, other NGOs, faith-based institutions, or private businesses; public emergency management organizations at any level of government, such as the federal Department of Homeland Security or state or local governments or agencies; and researchers and evaluators looking to assess the outcomes of responses to major emergencies or to help prepare for future responses.
* Sources for this material include a review of the emerging information on Hurricane Katrina, the Urban Institute's recent work in evaluating 9/11, and the authors' previous experience in evaluating a variety of humans services programs at federal, state and local levels of government. Our colleagues Carol DeVita, Olivia Golden, Elaine Morley, Nancy Pindus, and Sue Popkin provided useful suggestions.
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Usage, posting and reprint of materials on the UI web site:
Most publications may be downloaded free of charge from the web site in PDF format. This information may be used and copies made for research, academic, policy or other non-commercial purposes. Proper attribution is required. Copyright of the written materials contained within the Urban Institute website is owned or controlled by the Urban Institute. Posting UI research papers on other websites is permitted subject to prior approval from the Urban Institute—contact paffairs@ui.urban.org.
If you are unable to access or print the PDF document please contact us or call the Publications Office at (202) 261-5687.
Disclaimer: The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
