A recent survey distributed through e-mails to students about their thoughts and feelings toward Hurricane Katrina has had limited responses.
Of the initial 5,000 e-mail surveys sent out to students, 4,000 were deleted without being opened, associate professor of psychology and social science research fellow Virginia Fee said.
Avery Ezell, a sophomore in elementary education, said that her e-mail account has been overwhelmed by Katrina-related messages.
“I’ve gotten so much stuff about the hurricane that I don’t have time to go through it all,” Ezell said.
Fee said that feedback from students could really help in this research effort because everyone has something they can offer in helping prepare for next time.
“We’re really interested in getting feedback from the entire student body, whether or not they were impacted by the hurricane,” Fee said.
There are many problems that have risen since the hurricane struck because everyone has something they can offer in helping prepare for next time, Fee said.
Many students had younger siblings to take care of while their parents went back to their damaged homes to salvage and rebuild, and one idea to help with this is to offer daycare so these students can still attend classes. These are the types of problems that the university wants to hear student ideas about in order to make better preparations for the future, Fee said.
A total of 15,000 surveys were sent out, of which 2,000 have been completed, and 1,000 have been started but have not been completed, Fee said.
“The Internet is one of the only ways to organize with students who are scattered,” Fee said.
The social science research center has been working on this survey effort for two months, and it must be maintained daily, she said.
Once this information is completed, disaster researchers from across the country will meet for a Katrina Summit at the research center to participate in a brainstorming think tank, Fee said.
Surveying people is key to understanding the effects of disasters of this magnitude, director of compliance Tracy Arwood said.
“That’s the only way to get to the heart of societal issues,” Arwood said. “Most of the medical social behavioral knowledge is based on research that involved human volunteers.”
People do need to understand that it is their right to not take the survey, Arwood added.
The information collected from the surveys will help determine what needs to be done in future disasters. It could guide how resources are being handled now, how the state could help and what the university can do, Arwood said.
Using the Internet is becoming a common way to conduct research. Online research is new enough that people are still researching how to conduct this type of research, Arwood said.
“People have had varying rates of success,” Arwood said.
The success depends on the amount of response needed, as well as what type of audience the research is being conducted with, Arwood said.