SGER: Resiliency of Agricultural Communities after the 2008 Mississippi Floods

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With the support of this Small Grant for Exploratory Research, Dr. Heather McIlvaine-Newsad and David G. Casagrande, both of Western Illinois University, will undertake research on community resilience after natural disaster. The researchers' goal is to quantitatively model resiliency of agricultural communities in western Illinois after flooding during summer of 2008 using the community as the unit of analysis. Resiliency is conceptualized as a dependent variable comprised of five social characteristics: 1) social equity as a function of income; 2) population change; 3) local school consolidation; 4) ability to buy food, hardware, and medical services locally; and 5) quality of life measured with a standard happiness index. Four independent variables that affect resiliency are: 1) knowledge of past disasters and responses; 2) amount of kin in social networks; 3) access to financial capital; and 4) whether cultural models of social responsibility are orientated primarily towards kin, community, or the nation. The researchers will conduct semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 60 families and community meetings. Transcriptions of these materials will be analyzed to determine how people talk and think about the focus variables. Results of the qualitative analysis will be used to develop a structured survey to be mailed to 2000 families in 20 different communities within one year after the floods. This research is important for its potential contribution to both disaster theory and to improved post-disaster interventions. Although the variables will differ, the methodology can be broadly applied to studies of disaster and resiliency. This research will benefit society at large by explicating a social science approach to resiliency that is compatible with ecological conceptualizations and policy considerations. It will be possible to integrate results directly into state recovery policy. Research findings also will be presented to participating communities in a series of informational meetings.