SGER: The Effects of Severe Flooding on the Educational Development of Public School Students

在美国社会和行为科学中，对学生教育表现和职业生涯的研究有着悠久而杰出的历史，但对灾害和灾难性风险的社会后果的研究却少得多。 2008年6月爱荷华州东部的毁灭性洪水提供了一个机会，可以评估学生的洪水经历对他们随后的教育发展和职业生涯的影响。 调查人员此前一直根据与锡达拉皮兹社区学区的合同开展工作，以开发一个模型，反映就读其学校的学生不断变化的地理模式，目的是重组他们的入学政策和服务区域。 当雪松河的洪水比该地区以前记录的任何洪水事件都高11英尺（3.3米）时，一些住宅甚至没有包括在城市的500年洪水地图中，数万名居民流离失所。 根据先前收集的数据，调查人员能够确定1,834名学生居住在遭遇洪水的社区。 这项探索性研究的小额赠款将使这些调查人员能够进行基于教育绩效和灾难后果的社会科学理论的研究，这些理论侧重于中断和重建的网络关系，作为成功恢复的关键组成部分。 调查人员将对洪水区四年级到八年级的学生家庭进行纵向调查（来自大约420个家庭的676名学生），并跟踪留在更大的锡达拉皮兹社区的学生和家庭以及离开社区的学生。受影响的学生将与一组对照组的非洪水影响的学生配对，这些学生的种族和民族、家庭收入状况、该项目将利用和整合关于教育发展和社区应对灾害的流行社会科学理论，系统地评估自然灾害对青年教育表现的纵向影响。 项目结果应允许与卡特里娜飓风后在新奥尔良进行的研究进行比较，以及那些研究1997年北达科他州大福克斯洪水后的更有限的研究计划。 这个项目的数据应使更大的研究界能够对自然灾害对青年和家庭的影响进行更复杂的分析，因为受洪水影响的学生和家庭将与未受洪水影响的类似对照组学生和家庭进行系统的比较。 对社区和个人应对锡达拉皮兹洪水等灾害的更好理解，将对政策制定者、规划者和其他社区领导人越来越有价值，因为他们试图为重大灾难做好准备。

Research on student educational performance and careers has a long and distinguished history in American social and behavioral science, but research on the social consequences of disasters and catastrophic risk have been far less frequent. The devastating floods in Eastern Iowa in June 2008 provide an opportunity to assess the effects of students' flood experiences on their subsequent educational development and careers. The investigators had previously been working under contract to the Cedar Rapids Community School District to develop a model of the changing geographical patterns of students attending its schools for the purpose of reorganizing their school attendance policies and areas served. When unexpected flooding from the Cedar River that was 11 feet (3.3 m) higher than in any previously recorded flood event in the area submerged some residences not even included in the 500-year flood maps for the city, tens of thousands of residents were displaced. Based on previously collected data, the investigators were able to determine that 1,834 students lived in neighborhoods that encountered flooding. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research will enable these investigators to conduct research that is grounded in social scientific theories of educational performance and disaster aftermath that focus on disrupted and reconstituted network ties as key components of successful recovery. The investigators will conduct a longitudinal survey of fourth-grade through eighth-grade grade student families in the flood zone (676 students from approximately 420 families) and track students and families who remain in the larger Cedar Rapids community and those who left it. Affected students will be paired with a control group of non-flood affected students of similar race and ethnicity, family income status, grade in school, and school attended in 2008-2009 in an attempt to assess the distinctive effects of flood victimization on family life and educational performance.This project will systematically assess the longitudinal effects of a natural disaster on the educational performance of youth using and integrating prevailing social scientific theories of educational development and community responses to disaster. Project results should permit comparisons to be made with research conducted in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the more limited research program of those who studied the aftermath of the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The data from this project should allow the larger research community to engage in more sophisticated analyses of natural disaster impacts on youth and families, because flood-affected students and families will be systematically compared with similar control groups of students and families unaffected by the flood. Enhanced understanding of community and individual responses to disasters like the Cedar Rapids flood will be increasingly valuable for policy makers, planners, and other community leaders as they try to prepare for major catastrophes.