Community disaster preparedness to earthquakes in Washington State: Survey instruments in Arabic

The rediscovery of large earthquakes, specifically magnitude-nine (M9) earthquakes, in the 1980s spurred interest in seismicity research from an interdisciplinary perspective. Researchers from the University of Washington"s "The M9 Project" conducted a study to assess individual- and community-level factors related to disaster preparedness and resilience to earthquakes. The study included: a paper mail survey sent to a random sample of Seattle households (N=1,340) stratified by zip codes selected for their contrasting demographic characteristics, and a convenience sample from the Vietnamese (N=54) Health Board in Seattle and King County. Participants were randomly selected to receive a survey instrument on either individual or community disaster preparedness; these surveys differed only in the formulation of a small number of questions about emergency preparations. The survey instruments were originally written in English, then adapted into Arabic, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese to suit the languages used in immigrant and refugee communities in the United States. The instruments used to collect the data are in this published project. The data will be archived at a later date.