Methods matter. They influence what we know and who we come to know about in the context of hazards and disasters. Research methods are of profound importance to the scholarly advancement of the field and, accordingly, a growing number of publications focus on research methods and ethical practices associated with the study of extreme events. Still, notable gaps exist. The National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network was formed, in part, to respond to the need for more specific information about the status and expertise of the social science hazards and disaster research workforce. Drawing on data from 1,013 SSEER members located across five United Nations (UN) regions, this article reports on the demographic characteristics of SSEER researchers; provides a novel inventory of methods used by social science hazards and disaster researchers; and explores how methodological approaches vary by specific researcher attributes including discipline, professional status, researcher type based on level of involvement in the field, hazard/disaster type studied, and disaster phase studied. The results have implications for training, mentoring, and workforce development initiatives geared toward ensuring that a diverse next generation of social science researchers is prepared to study the root causes and social consequences of disasters.
Researchers and emergency managers have long used the disaster cycle as a conceptual tool to organize activities associated with each overlapping phase of a disaster. This special issue includes articles focused on the preparedness, emergency response, impacts, recovery, mitigation, and resilience phases of the disaster cycle. The goal of the collection is to summarize key findings from recently published scientific research for a broader audience.This special issue grew out of a longstanding collaboration between the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committee on the Sociology of Disasters (RC-39) and the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. In September 2017, Dr. Shih-Kai (Sky) Huang and Dr. Tristan Wu became co-editors of RC-39's flagship journal, the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters (IJMED). That same year, the Natural Hazards Center established the Research Counts series, which
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