The association between social cohesion and community disaster resilience: A cross‐sectional study

Abstract

A cross‐sectional study design was created, using the Index of Perceived Community Resilience (IPCR) and Buckner's Index of Cohesion (BIC) to survey 386 flood evacuees from six communities in Kelantan, Malaysia, in 2015. The respondents were mostly female (54.7%); lived in basic housing (95.6%); average income (55.9%); secondary level schooling (81.1%); not involved with community organisations (95.1%), volunteering activities (91.2%), or emergency teams (96.9%); inexperience with injury during flooding (94%); experienced the emergency disaster (61.6%); and their mean age was 49 years old. Overall, respondents scored a high level of community disaster resilience (CDR) (mean 3.9) and social cohesion (mean 3.79). Also, respondents’ housing type, event of injury during disaster, volunteering in post‐disaster activities, and emergency team participation were significantly associated with CDR (p = 0.001–0.002), organisational involvement (p = 0.016), and emergency disaster experience (p = 0.028) were significantly associated with social cohesion. The Pearson correlation coefficient results mostly showing a moderate, weak, and one with a strong relationship. There is a strong relationship between community participation (CDR) in events and BIC variables (r = 0.529, p = 0.001). Other analysis shows a moderate but significant relationship with BIC; is open to ideas (r = 0.332, p = 0.001); community has similar values/ideas (r = 0.421, p = 0.001); sense of pride (r = 0.389, p = 0.001); strong leadership (r = 0.339, p = 0.001); positive change (r = 0.484, p = 0.001); and able to handle problems (r = 0.454, p = 0.001). Overall, the results show that respondents had high levels of CDR and social cohesion, while the demographic characteristics show the impact of CDR and social cohesion. In conclusion, the data gives original insight into the level of association between social cohesion and disaster resilience, which could be used as a building block in sustainable disaster recovery. There is a need to explore this further on programmes designed to improve social cohesion across communities.

Social Cohesion and Community Resilience During COVID-19 and Pandemics: A Rapid Scoping Review to Inform the United Nations Research Roadmap for COVID-19 Recovery

“…Many emphasize the importance of stakeholder engagement in this area of work and research. 1,14,18,19,28,29,[36][37][38][39][40]42 This body of literature has many common themes that agree on factors that promote social cohesion in disaster recovery. They include (a) government interventions (financial stimulus, social protections, etc), (b) government protocols for communicating with the public and stakeholder engagement, (c) community-led and localized recovery efforts, and (d) community-building events and opportunities.…”

“…Social cohesion refers to the degree of social connectedness and solidarity between different community groups within a society, as well as the level of trust and connectedness between individuals and across community groups. [1][2][3] It exists on multiple levels of organization, from the household level through international relations, all of which are intertwined and interact with one another. 4 The relationships among individuals and communities and their local, regional, and national levels of government are affected by social cohesion.…”

“…28 The benefits of community engagement to the recovery process include the opportunity to better tailor policies to match public priorities, understanding of diverse need, attention to nuanced circumstances, public buy-in and participation in policies, and improved appropriateness of interventions that, in turn, increases efficiency and cost effectiveness. 1,18,26,35,38 Beyond the communication of transmission risk, we have learned about the importance of holistic community engagement from previous epidemics. 29 A 5-step community engagement process was developed from the Ebola crisis and includes:…”

Social Ecology of Police Resilience

“…Various studies show that higher levels of community cohesion are associated with a lower risk of individual violent victimization and crime rates (Hirschfield & Bowers, 1997;Lee, 2000;Olutola & Bello, 2016). In addition, a number of studies demonstrated the significant link between the community cohesion and resilience (Ludin, Rohaizat, & Arbon, 2019;Patel & Gleason, 2018). Community resilience refers to the capacity of a community to survive, respond to, and recover from adverse events and community cohesion plays a key role in this process.…”

The Mechanism of Social Organization Participation in Natural Hazards Emergency Relief: A Case Study Based on the Social Network Analysis

“…Kim, et al explore climate justice and flood risk with specific reference to community resilience at the county-level, results suggest that community social and ecological characteristics were influenced by flood losses and that social capital and local proactive planning and policy measures lead to lower disaster losses and enhanced community resilience [30]. Ludin, et al made use of the Index of Perceived Community Resilience (IPCR) and Buckner’s Index of Cohesion (BIC) to survey 386 flood evacuees from six communities in Kelantan, Malaysia, and their results showed that the higher social cohesion and social resilience, the higher disaster resilience [31].…”