ORIGINAL RESEARCH Measuring Individual Disaster Recovery: A Socioecological

Background: Disaster recovery is a complex phenomenon. Too often, recovery is measured in singular fashion, such as quantifying rebuilt infrastructure or lifelines, without taking in to account the affected population’s individual and community recovery. A comprehensive framework is needed that encompasses a much broader and far-reaching construct with multiple underlying dimensions and numerous causal pathways; without the consideration of a comprehensive framework that investigates relationships between these factors, an accu-rate measurement of recovery may not be valid. This study proposes a model that encapsulates these ideas into a single framework, the Socio-Ecological Model of Recovery. Methods: Using confirmatory factor analysis, an operational measure of recovery was developed and validated using the five measures of housing stability, economic stability, physical health, mental health, and social role adapta-tion. The data were drawn from a sample of displaced households following Hurricane Katrina. Measures of psy-chological strength, risk, disaster exposure, neighborhood contextual effects, and formal and informal help were modeled to examine their direct and indirect effects on recovery using a structural equation model. Findings: All five elements of the recovery measure were positively correlated with a latent measure of recovery, although mental health and social role adaptation displayed the strongest associations. An individual’s psy