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8 - Interviewing in disaster-affected areas: lessons learned from post-Katrina surveys of New Orleans residents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

By
Mollyann Brodie ,
Claudia Deane ,
Elizabeth C. Hamel ,
Melissa Herrmann  and
Eran Ben-Porath
Edited by
Roger Tourangeau ,
Brad Edwards ,
Timothy P. Johnson ,
Kirk M. Wolter  and
Nancy Bates
Mollyann Brodie
Affiliation:
Kaiser Family Foundation
Claudia Deane
Affiliation:
Kaiser Family Foundation
Elizabeth C. Hamel
Affiliation:
Kaiser Family Foundation
Melissa Herrmann
Affiliation:
Social Science Research Solutions
Eran Ben-Porath
Affiliation:
Social Science Research Solutions
Roger Tourangeau
Affiliation:
Westat Research Organisation, Maryland
Brad Edwards
Affiliation:
Westat Research Organisation, Maryland
Timothy P. Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Chicago
Kirk M. Wolter
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Nancy Bates
Affiliation:
US Census Bureau
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Summary

Introduction

Even before Hurricane Katrina began to form as a tropical depression over the southeastern Bahamas, New Orleans was a city facing a number of social challenges. The city’s majority Black population was plagued by high poverty rates, high rates of violent crime and high rates of chronic diseases, AIDS and infant mortality, exacerbated by one of the nation’s highest uninsurance rates (Ritea & Young, 2004; Rudowitz, Rowland, & Shartzer, 2006; Webster Jr., & Bishaw, 2006). When the historic port then became the focus of a combination of natural and man-made disaster, its residents became that much more burdened, many uprooted from their homes, some to other dwellings in the city, others gone from the state for good.

In the wake of this disaster, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) determined that one way it could serve the New Orleans community with which it had a long history, as well as the policymakers tasked with leading its recovery, was to apply its survey research expertise to giving a voice and national visibility to residents by reporting what their lives were like in the aftermath of the storm, what they had experienced, what they had lost, and what they needed from recovery efforts. The project turned into a five-year effort which produced four different surveys of the local population, conducted during all three phases of disaster as described in Chapter 6 of this volume (rescue and relief, recovery, and development). The surveys were carried out in conjunction with a team of experts at Social Science Research Solutions, and each was fielded using a different survey methodology, which by default had to evolve along with the changing situation on the ground. This chapter will serve as a case study of this evolving methodology, and what these efforts suggest for interviewing post-disaster populations in the US and internationally.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hard-to-Survey Populations , pp. 157 - 179
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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