34 - Methodological Challenges in Studying the Mental Health Consequences of Disasters

Summary

This chapter discusses the methodological challenges that researchers face when designing, implementing, and analyzing studies aimed at understanding the mental health consequences of disasters. There are four key logistical challenges faced by postdisaster researchers: organizing the research plan, organizing the research team, establishing relationships with the local community, and obtaining funding and approvals. It is the central goal of all human-based research to clearly identify a target population and to sample persons from that population as effectively as possible. This brings up one of the key challenges particular to postdisaster research design: defining the population of interest and finding these persons in a postdisaster circumstance. Two study designs, which include case-control and experimental, are seldom used in postdisaster research. The chapter considers three key areas of measurement challenges in the field: measurement of disaster exposure, measurement of relevant covariates, and measurement of the health indicators of interest.