Methodological challenges to confirmatory latent variable models of social vulnerability

Abstract

Socially vulnerable communities experience disproportionately negative outcomes following natural disasters and underscoring a need for well-validated measures to identify those at risk. However, questions have surfaced regarding the factor structure, internal consistency, and generalizability of social vulnerability measures. A reliance on data-driven techniques, which are susceptible to sample-specific characteristics, has likely exacerbated the difficulty generalizing social vulnerability measures across contexts. This study sought to validate previously published structures of SoVI using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We fit CFA models of 28 sociodemographic variables frequently used to calculate a commonly used measure, the social vulnerability index (SoVI), drawn from the American Community Survey across 4162 census tracts in Florida. Confirmatory models generally did not support theory-driven pillars of SoVI that were previously used to study vulnerability in the New York metropolitan area. Modified models and alternative SoVI factor structures also failed to fit the data. Many of the input variables displayed little to no variability, limiting their utility and explanatory power. Taken together, our results highlight the poor generalizability of SoVI across contexts, but raise several important considerations for reliability and validity, as well as issues related to source data and scale. We discuss the implications of these findings for improved theory-driven measurement of social vulnerability.

Methodological improvements in social vulnerability index construction reinforce role of wealth across international contexts

“…Furthermore, we find that across eight countries of varied contexts (in North, Central and South America, Asia and Africa), the same concepts are important. Though previous studies have been focused on specific geographies and types of modelling approaches, our findings are significant in that given these methodological improvements, the findings still resonate those of several studies which show the importance or correlation of poverty with social vulnerability Goodman et al (2021); Wisner et al (2014);Fatemi et al (2017).…”

“…Existing work has largely focused on using structured statistical methods (i.e., parametric models) to create and evaluate social vulnerability models Cutter et al (2003); Cutter and Finch (2008); Schmidtlein et al (2008); Goodman et al (2021). However, given the complex nature of social factors, possible interactions, mediation, and feedback mechanisms, more flexible models have shown promise Zhao et al (2021).…”

Comprensión del homicidio en las ciudades capitales colombianas. Un estudio de vulnerabilidad

“…La mayoría de los estudios sobre homicidios analizan esta problemática de forma aislada y en conjuntos de variables, generalmente de pares de variables (Goodman et al 2021; Chaparro et al 2021). Los estudios multivariados son escasos debido a la dificultad en los procesos de recolección de datos y a la naturaleza misma de las variables que influyen en los homicidios.…”

The cost of social vulnerability: an integrative conceptual framework and model for assessing financial risks in natural disaster management

“…These studies conceptualize how natural disasters produce divergent damages and costs dependent upon social vulnerability and build up relevant empirical evidence to support this claim (Fothergill and Peek 2004 ; Kahn 2005 ; Cutter and Emrich 2006 ; Myers et al 2008 ; Zhang and Peacock 2009 ; Landry et al 2011 ). Compared to the public finance literature, the natural hazards literature has relatively well developed multifaceted indicators for measuring social vulnerability by drawing on the theories and variables discussed in these three areas (Yoon 2012 ; Chang et al 2015 ; Almutairi et al 2020 ; Goodman et al 2021 ). Yet, even in this literature, research particularly concerned with the financial and economic costs of disasters tends to be viewed in isolation from the discussion of social vulnerability (Zou and Wei 2009 ; Miao and Ding 2017 ; Zhu et al 2021 ; Chen and Chang 2021 ).…”