Cross-Cultural International Research: Sociology and Disaster

Abstract

Early cross-cultural studies of disaster responses are sum­marized to provide a context for recent collaborative efforts. Many of these have been initiated by researchers from the United States who have joined colleagues in numerous other countries to standardize measurement instruments and as­sess aspects of the public response. These efforts have high­lighted definitional, theoretical, and methodological difficulties which are being addressed in current studies. Finally, current policy developments are described that may encourage future research that is cross-societal in focus and collaborative in implementation.