The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction defines disaster as “A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, leading to one or more of the following: human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts.” Rapid onset natural disasters take two forms (McLennan, Bearman & Ryan, 2022): geophysical (earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis) and weather-related (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and wildfires). These often strike communites with little warning resulting in significant adverse human impacts, including death, injury and traumatic stresses. It has been observed that the number of weather-related disasters and the losses they cause have increased all globally due to the effects of climate change (McGee & Penning-Rowsell, 2023; IPCC, 2022). In addition, there are other natural disasters that develop more slowly such as droughts, famines and illness epidemics. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, which can also be considered as a climate change related disaster, has had global repercussions and affected most countries in unprecedented ways.
Due to its geological, topographic structure and climatic characteristics, Turkey is located in a geographical location where several types of disasters, especially earthquakes, are experienced frequently. Turkey is among the countries that can be described as "high risk" in terms of earthquakes (AFAD 2018). Approximately 60% of the loss of life due to disasters in Turkey has resulted from earthquakes, and an earthquake that causes extensive loss of life and property occurs on average every five years (AFAD 2020a). The major earthquakes that caused damage and loss of life in Turkey since 1999 are as follows: 1999 Gölcük- Düzce earthquake 17,480 deaths (AFAD 2018); 2003 Bingöl earthquake 176 deaths (Aydan et.al, 2002); 2011 Van earthquake 644 deaths (AFAD 2011); Elazig earthquake 38 deaths; and the 2020 Izmir earthquake 113 deaths (AFAD 2020b). In addition to earthquakes, other types of disasters such as landslides, floods, rockfalls and avalanches are also frequently experienced in Turkey. In 2021, 13,135 people were affected by the flood disaster in the Western Black Sea region (AFAD 2021). In 2021, severe storms struck Istanbul and Kocaeli in the Marmara region, resulting in injuries and substantial economic and financial losses. In 2021, 16 people lost their lives when numerous forest fires occurred in 54 provinces in the Mediterranean, Aegean, Marmara, Western Black Sea and Southeastern Anatolia Regions; hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests were burned and several settlements were destroyed (Varol, 2021).
In the face of disasters of such magnitude, psychological preparation has become recognised as a vital component of community disaster preparedness alongside traditional approaches to physical or material preparation of households to survive disaster events (Agarwal et. al, 2020, Zakour, 2023). Disaster preparedness at the community level can be defined as personal protective behavior shaped to protect individuals from unexpected, unpredictable situations that may have an adverse impact on their life and possessions. All disaster management frameworks and models emphasize the importance of being ready for unexpected circumstances (Suhaimi & Marzuki 2016). Historically, response agencies have concentrated attention on the physical or material preparations that need to be made in order to protect oneself and one's family from death or injury, and to avoid or minimize financial and economic loss (Malkina-Pykh & Pykh 2015; McLennan, Marques & Every 2020). Thus, most of the studies reported on disaster preparedness have focused on such physical or material preparations. More recently, disaster researchers have turned their attention to the importance of psychological, or mental, preparation in addition to physical and material preparation. Researchers including Clode (2010); Every, McLennan, Reynolds and Trigg (2019); Malkina-Pykh and Pykh (2013); Roudini, Khankeh and Witruk (2017); Suhaimi and Marzuki (2016); and Zakour (2023) have argued that psychological preparation for disaster threat is as important as physical/material preparation. Researchers have suggested that psychological preparation consists of at least two broad mental dimensions. The first of these is the cognitive aspect, which mostly includes accurate knowledge about the threat situation, possible adaptive reactions and the threat environment; the second is the emotional aspect, which includes self-awareness and emotional self-control. Research by Boylan and Lawrence (2020) supported this two-dimensional formulation in their Australian study about preparedness for wildfire threats and noted that most people experience anticipatory negative emotions such as stress, fear or anxiety to some extent about possible future disaster threats and these feelings can motivate them to act, take constructive preparations and thus lessen the danger. However, Boylan and Lawrence also emphasised that if these feelings become excessive, they will impair a person's cognitive functioning (such as risk perception, decision-making, attention, memory, and attentional focus), which in turn may have an adverse impact on adaptive behavior during an actual threat event. The importance of this is that although physical/material preparations and plans against the threat of disaster are essential, cognitive awareness and coping with extreme emotional reactions in a threat situation become very important to implement survival plans effectively.
Being psychologically prepared for a disaster threat can thus help people cope with the stress of an emergency warning period and hazard impact, feel safer, be more controlled, and make better survival decisions. In addition, preparing individuals psychologically for the impact of disasters can help reduce adverse mental effects of disasters by protecting householders from harmful psychological distress and long-term mental health problems that may arise from the trauma of being involved in disasters (Roudini et al., 2017, Zakour, 2023). Thus, psychological preparation before a crisis may help people predict, recognize, and control their emotions, leading to improved coping. The components of psychological preparation that must be included in a particular at-risk community setting should take into account the specific natural hazard threats likely to impact that community, as well as the practical and material local demands and difficulties, and the resources available. These elements must all be culturally acceptable. Therefore, research is needed to determine the psychological readiness of individuals in particular communities to face the kinds of disasters most likely to impact these communities. The question arises: what instruments are available to policy makers and emergency response agencies to assess levels of psychological preparedness for disasters in particular communities? The measure developed by Boylan and Lawrence (2020) was developed specifically for Australian communites facing wildfires and thus has limited applicability to the natural hazard threat situation in Turkey, where the major threats historically have come from earthquakes, landslides and floods. A more general 26-item measure of psychological preparedness for disasters in northen Australian communities was developed by Zulch, the Psychological Preparedness for Disaster Threat Scale (PPDTS-26, Zulch, 2019) and a preliminary inspection suggested that this measure was likely to prove suitable as the basis for a Turkish measure of psychological preparedness for disasters likely to impact Turkish communites. It was noted that a Russian-language version of an early (18-item, Zulch et al., 2012) version of the PPDTS had been developed by Malkina-Pykh and Pykh (2013), however no details of the item-content were reported.
The aim of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Psychological Preparedness for Disaster Threat Scale (PPDTS-26) and adapt it as needed in order to develop a measure of psychological preparedness for disasters appropriate for use in Turkey in order to investigate and promote psychological preparedness for future disaster events. The Results section of this paper reports English language versions of the PPDTS-26 items. The final Turkish version of the measure is provided as an Appendix.