Inventory of the Disaster Field Studies in the Social and Behavioral Sciences 1919-1979

In 1961 the Disaster Research Group of the National Academy of Sciences issued a monograph entitled Field Studies of Disaster Behavior: An Inventory. That monograph was an attempt to provide in one source “a relatively complete list of the field studies on human behavior in disasters that have been conducted by behavioral scientists” (1961:1). The list included 114 field studies of 103 events which had produced 121 reports. In the two decades since that monograph there has been an acceleration in the number of field studies which have been undertaken. This reflects the flourishing of disaster research generally. The Academy inventory therefore is considerably out of date. Annotated bibliographies produced in the ensuing years have not had the same objective as an inventory; a gap in the disaster literature consequently exists. Researchers, planners, and others interested in research findings do not have one source which lists all field studies and identifies and locates pertinent publications for specific disaster situations. While this report builds on the old Academy inventory, it is not merely an extension of that publication. It differs somewhat in both coverage and format. The end product is a result of a series of decisions we had to make in developing our new inventory. It lists and provides relevant information on disaster field studies in the social and behavioral sciences in English language sources and references for more than a sixty year period. The work on our inventory was accomplished as a part of a larger effort at the Disaster Research Center (DRC) which included the production of a companion volume, Inventory of the Japanese Disaster Research Literature in the Social and Behavioral Sciences