Myths and Misconceptions About Disasters: Do Students in the Field Know Better?

Abstract

Disaster myths pose a great challenge in disaster risk management all over the world. Thesemisconceptions mean barriers to disaster higher education as well. This research is designed to examinethese beliefs among disaster management students at the National University of Public Service, Hungary,as well as in a control group compiled from students from three other Hungarian universities. Based on themethodology of research published by David Alexander, a questionnaire was edited with 19 false statementsabout disaster events. Respondents had to evaluate them on a Likert scale from 1 to 5, where 1 means “com-pletely disagree” and 5 means “completely agree”. Strong agreement was expressed for some of the mis-conceptions regarding disasters (e.g. unburied bodies constitute a serious health hazard), and to a lesserdegree for others (e.g. disasters cannot be managed systematically). The results of the control group reachedsimilar values to those of the test groups, however in some cases the former tend to be more skeptical aboutthe statements. Although Hungarian students shared the same beliefs as US and Italian students, the Hun-garians seem to be less critical of the statements. These disaster myths create a serious problem in disasterhigher education and have a great impact on future disaster managers in the field.

Disaster myths pose a great challenge in disaster risk management all over the world. Thesemisconceptions mean barriers to disaster higher education as well. This research is designed to examinethese beliefs among disaster management students at the National University of Public Service, Hungary,as well as in a control group compiled from students from three other Hungarian universities. Based on themethodology of research published by David Alexander, a questionnaire was edited with 19 false statementsabout disaster events. Respondents had to evaluate them on a Likert scale from 1 to 5, where 1 means “com-pletely disagree and 5 means “completely agree. Strong agreement was expressed for some of the mis-conceptions regarding disasters (e.g. unburied bodies constitute a serious health hazard), and to a lesserdegree for others (e.g. disasters cannot be managed systematically). The results of the control group reachedsimilar values to those of the test groups, however in some cases the former tend to be more skeptical aboutthe statements. Although Hungarian students shared the same beliefs as US and Italian students, the Hun-garians seem to be less critical of the statements. These disaster myths create a serious problem in disasterhigher education and have a great impact on future disaster managers in the field.