Evaluating Children’s Learning of Adaptive Response Capacities from ShakeOut, an Earthquake and Tsunami Drill in Two Washington State School Districts

Abstract

In 2012, Washington state participated in ShakeOut, an annual, one-day event that encourages residents to practice "drop, cover and hold on" drills for earthquakes and evacuation for tsunamis. To better understand the role of school drills in improving individual and community resilience to disasters, this evaluation examined the effectiveness of the ShakeOut drills in improving or maintaining children's accurate risk perceptions and adaptive response capacities for earthquakes and tsunamis. Using matched pretest and posttest questionnaires, the analysis examined both population level and individual differences in children's knowledge and scenario-based knowledge application before and after ShakeOut. Children demonstrated high levels of correct knowledge of protective actions for earthquakes and tsunamis both before and after ShakeOut. However, the findings indicate that significant portions of children have varying levels of knowledge of the causes of injury and approximately a third of children chose an incorrect action or indicated uncertainty in scenarios not commonly practiced in school earthquake drills. Also, more than a quarter of children were not aware they practiced vertical evacuation procedures for a tsunami during ShakeOut. Children would benefit from practice for different scenarios, such as when they are outside or traveling between classes, and explicit lessons on protective actions.

Alerting under imminent threat: guidance on alerts issued by outdoor siren and short message alerting systems

“…• Radio and TV advertisements about outdoor siren alerting disseminated alongside monthly tests (Gregg et al 2003), • Developing advertising campaigns on outdoor siren alerts and effective protective actions that depict non-action as undesirable behavior (Farrelly et al 2002;Proulx et al 2001), • A nation-wide "Tornado Day" similar to the nationwide Earthquake 'Shake-out' Drills that occur in the same day each year across the United States (Johnson 2013;Wood and Glik 2012;Green and Petal 2010). These drills would allow people to receive the siren alert, potentially receive accompanying information, and practice taking the recommended protective action.…”

Improving the Impact and Implementation of Disaster Education: Programs for Children Through Theory‐Based Evaluation

“…In this instance, we applied a program theory matrix to model the generally unexamined assumptions in the drill activities that related to the drill's theory of action. The program theory matrix was used in the planning of an evaluation of ShakeOut, an earthquake and tsunami drill in two Washington State school districts . The second example was used for planning a process evaluation of What's the Plan, Stan?…”

“…Column 6 includes the proposed pieces of performance information, or outcome indicators. Typically, classroom‐based drills are evaluated using a visual observation of children demonstrating “drop, cover, and hold.” For the ShakeOut evaluation, we proposed measuring before and after the drill: (1) the percentage of children who know the causes of earthquake injuries; (2) the percentage of children who recognize correct and incorrect protective actions in different scenarios, including indoors with a desk, indoors without a desk, and outdoors; and (3) children's levels of disaster‐related anxiety before and after the drill . Other potential outcome indicators that were outside the scope of the ShakeOut evaluation included the percentage of children with high self‐confidence in their ability to protect themselves during an earthquake, and the percentage of children who have high trust in authorities.…”

“…Most of the children who participated in the study identified correct protective actions for both familiar and less familiar earthquake scenarios (Ref. , p. 21). However, approximately a third of children chose an incorrect action or indicated uncertainty in scenarios not practiced by the participating schools during ShakeOut or in previous earthquake drills, namely, scenarios where the children would be outside, or inside but not near a table or desk (Ref.…”

“…However, approximately a third of children chose an incorrect action or indicated uncertainty in scenarios not practiced by the participating schools during ShakeOut or in previous earthquake drills, namely, scenarios where the children would be outside, or inside but not near a table or desk (Ref. , p. 21). These findings and others prompted us to conclude that it is problematic to assume that ShakeOut and similar school drills result in learning outcomes that will effectively mitigate injuries and deaths among children during an earthquake (Ref.…”