Spinning in circles?: A systematic review on the role of theory in social vulnerability, resilience and adaptation research

An increasing number of publications focus on social vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation (SVRA) towards natural hazards and climate change. Despite this proliferation of research, a systematic understanding of how these studies are theoretically grounded is lacking. Here, we systematically reviewed 4432 articles that address SVRA in various disciplinary fields (e.g. psychology, sociology, geography, mathematics) for various hazards, including floods, droughts, landslides, storm surges, wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcano eruptions. We focus on the extent to which these studies explicate the frameworks, theoretical constructs or theories they rely on. Surprisingly, we found that about 90% of the reviewed studies do not explicitly refer to a theoretical un-derpinning. Overall, theories focusing on individuals' SVRA were more frequently used than those focusing on systems, society, groups, and networks. Moreover, the uptake of theories varied according to the hazard investigated and field of knowledge, being more frequent in wildfire and flood studies and articles published in social science journals. Based on our analysis, we propose a reflexive handling of theories to foster more transparent, comparable, and robust empirical research on SVRA

Afetzedeler toplumsal dayanıklılığı nasıl algılıyor? 2011 Van depremleri örneği

Doğal afetlere karşı toplumsal dayanıklılığı anlamak ve arttırmak, afet risk yönetiminin önemli bir parçası olarak görülmektedir (örn., IFRC, 2004; UNISDR, 2007). İlgili yazında çeşitli şekillerde ele alınan dayanıklılık (örn., Cutter ve ark., 2008; Norris, Stevens, Pfefferbaum, Wyche ve Pfefferbaum, 2008), gen ellikle toplumun afetten sonra toparlanması ya da afet olmadan önceki halinden daha iyi hale gelmesi olarak kavramsallaştırılmıştır. İnsanların ve toplumların çeşitli afetlere karşı dayanıklılığını tanımlamaya ve anlamaya yönelik çalışmalar son yıllarda ar tış göstermiştir. Ancak, toplumsal dayanıklılığın afet deneyimi olan afetzedeler tarafından nasıl algılandığına yönelik çalışmalar görece sınırlıdır. Avrupa Birliği Komisyonu 7. Çerçeve Programı kapsamındaki emBRACE (Building Resilience amongst Communities in Europe) projesi dahilinde desteklenmiş olan bu çalışmanın amacı, afetzedelerin toplumsal dayanıklılığa dair algılarını 2011 Van depremleri örneğinde niteliksel olarak araştırmaktır. Bu amaçla, Van’da kartopu örnekleme yöntemiyle belirlenmiş 20 katılımc ıyla derinlemesine görüşmeler yapılmıştır. Depremden bir buçuk sene sonra yapılan görüşmelerde, katılımcılara deprem sonrası dayanıklılıkla ilişkili etkenler ile genel olarak toplumsal dayanıklılığı nasıl algıladıklarına dair toplam on iki açık uçlu soru s orulmuştur. Veri analizi için fikir birliğine dayalı nitel araştırma yöntemi ( Consensual Qualitative Research ; Hill, 2012) kullanılmıştır. Bulgular, afetzedelere göre deprem sonrası dönemde dayanıklılık ile depremlere karşı genel dayanıklılığı nelerin beli rlediğini ortaya koymuştur. Dayanıklılık bireysel, toplumsal, kurumsal ve yapısal boyutlarda çok çeşitli faktörlerle ilişkilendirilmiştir. Afetzedeler, toplumsal dayanıklılığı açıklarken özellikle yönetimsel konuları vurgulamıştır. Toplumsal dayanıklılık a fet sonrası dönemde yeterli yardım ve hizmetlerin zamanında ve adil şekilde sağlanması, iyi yönetim, finansal kaynaklar ve dini inanç; afet öncesi dönemde ise afet bilinci, hazırlıklı olma ve zarar azaltma ve sosyal dayanışma ile ilişkilendirilmiştir. Çalı şma bulguları, deprem deneyimi olan afetzedelere göre toplumsal dayanıklılık için nelerin gerekli olduğunu göstermiştir. Ayrıca, bulgular afet risk yönetimi çalışmaları ve toplumsal dayanıklılığın arttırılmasına yönelik uygulamalar için önemli bilgiler sağlamıştır

How do survivors perceive community resilience? The case of the 2011 earthquakes in Van, Turkey

Understanding and facilitating community resilience have been increasingly acknowledged as important aspects of disaster risk management. The concept is often described as bouncing back or forward following disaster events. Various attempts have been made to conceptualize resilience of communities and individuals to disasters. The present research aimed to qualitatively explore survivors' perceptions of community resilience in the case of the 2011 Van earthquakes in Turkey. To this end, in-depth interviews were conducted, as part of a large-scale study, with twenty earthquake survivors recruited through snowball sampling in Van. Consensual qualitative research method was employed for data analysis. The findings provided an understanding of both specific indicators related to resilience in the post-quake period and also how survivors perceive characteristics related to general resilience for earthquakes. The findings pointed out that resilience is perceived to be related to provision of adequate, timely aid and services distributed fairly and to good governance, financial resources, and faith following earthquakes as well as to awareness, preparedness and mitigation, and social solidarity before quakes. The implications of the findings for disaster risk management with a view of facilitating resilience and suggestions for future research are provided

How does impact of objective and subjective disaster exposure relate to the three clusters of posttraumatic stress symptoms?

Objective: Around the globe, millions of people are exposed to disasters annually. Disasters may result in a wide range of psychological consequences in adult populations, including posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTS). However, little is known about the effects of the impacts of type of disaster exposure on the symptoms of PTS. This study aimed to understand the effects of objective and subjective impact severity of disaster exposure on symptoms of PTS in the aftermath of two earthquakes which struck Van, Turkey in 2011. Methods: Three hundred and sixty earthquake survivors from districts with different levels of earthquake exposure participated in the study. Consistent with the aims of the study, the participants responded to the Impact of Event Scale-Revised and a measure of earthquake exposure severity. The relationship between symptom clusters and impact of disaster exposure was examined through a multivariate analysis of variance. Results: The findings demonstrated differential effects of type of disaster exposure severity on the symptom clusters of PTS, showing that the two core clusters, re-experiencing and avoidance, differentially related to levels of subjective and objective impact of disaster exposure while symptoms of hyperarousal were commonly reported in survivors who experienced high levels of impact irrespective of the type of exposure. Discussion: This study provided empirical evidence for an important distinction regarding impact of exposure between symptom clusters of PTSD. The findings may guide the development or planning of psychoeducation-based interventions with differential focus on posttraumatic stress symptoms for survivors having different levels of objective and/or subjective impact of exposure

Exploring Factors Associated with Psychological Resilience Among Earthquake Survivors from Turkey

This study aimed to explore factors associated with psychological resilience in a sample of 360 survivors of the two earthquakes in Van, Turkey in 2011. Using a survey with measures on various pre-, within-, and post-disaster variables, it has been shown that psychological resilience was influenced by multiple factors, providing empirical evidence for a multifactorial understanding of resilience. Furthermore, the study extended the traditional ways of resilience assessment by including stress-coping ability and severity of trauma-related symptoms as indicators of psychological resilience simultaneously. Findings were discussed considering the implications for research and interventions in the aftermath of natural disasters

The role of honor concerns in disclosing (vs. Hiding) COVID-19 diagnosis: insights from Türkiye

Members of honor cultures value engaging in moral behaviors and managing their social image to maintain their honor. These two goals reflect reputation and integrity concerns, which also have bearing on gender roles. In the current study, we examined a) evaluations of women and men described as diagnosed with COVID-19 and as either hiding or disclosing their diagnosis, b) the moderating role of honor concerns (reputation and integrity) and the gender of the infected person in these evaluations, and c) the relationship between honor concerns and individuals’ own disclosure preferences among participants living in Türkiye, a country that exemplifies an honor culture. Findings revealed that participants with stronger reputation concerns evaluated a woman’s hiding behavior more favorably than that of a man’s. Moreover, higher integrity concerns were associated with lower levels of participants’ own preference to hide a diagnosis for both men and women, whereas reputation concerns were positively associated with a preference for hiding a diagnosis among men only. Furthermore, a content analysis of participants’ open-ended explanations of their views on women’s and men’s motivation to hide a diagnosis revealed further evidence for the gendered nature of reputation concerns. Our findings point to the importance of prioritizing integrity concerns (and downplaying reputation concerns) in public health campaigns in honor cultures

Cross-Cultural Consistency and Relativity in the Enjoyment of Thinking Versus Doing

Which is more enjoyable: trying to think enjoyable thoughts or doing everyday solitary activities? Wilson et al. (2014) found that American participants much preferred solitary everyday activities, such as reading or watching TV, to thinking for pleasure. To see whether this preference generalized outside of the United States, we replicated the study with 2,557 participants from 12 sites in 11 countries. The results were consistent in every country: Participants randomly assigned to do something reported significantly greater enjoyment than did participants randomly assigned to think for pleasure. Although we found systematic differences by country in how much participants enjoyed thinking for pleasure, we used a series of nested structural equation models to show that these differences were fully accounted for by country-level variation in 5 individual differences, 4 of which were positively correlated with thinking for pleasure (need for cognition, openness to experience, meditation experience, and initial positive affect) and 1 of which was negatively correlated (reported phone usage)