Community recovery after a natural disaster: Core data from a survey of communities affected by the 2010 Mt. Merapi eruptions in Central Java, Indonesia.

The ``Community Recovery after a Natural Disaster: A Survey of Communities Affected by Mt. Merapi Eruptions'' data that are described herein were gathered 16 months after the 2010 Mt. Merapi volcanic eruptions in Central Java, Indonesia. Data collection was organized as a pilot effort to document victim experiences of the disaster; including disaster preparation, mitigation, and recovery. Three-stage clustered random sampling was conducted to create a sample that was representative of varying levels of destruction experienced by victims of the eruptions as well as one that included respondents who were still living in a disaster shelter, who had returned to their previous community, and who had moved on to a new community. By drawing respondents from 10 different villages or shelter communities, a total respondent sample of 400 was collected.

Migration and Mental Health in the Aftermath of Disaster: Evidence from Mt. Merapi, Indonesia.

Migration is a standard survival strategy in the context of disasters. While prior studies have examined factors associated with return migration following disasters, an area that remains relatively underexplored is whether moving home to one's original community results in improved health and well-being compared to other options such as deciding to move on. In the present study, our objective is to explore whether return migration, compared to other migration options, results in superior improvements to mental health. We draw upon data from a cross-sectional pilot study conducted 16 months after a series of volcanic eruptions in Merapi, Indonesia. Using ordinal logistic regression, we find that compared to respondents who were still displaced (reference category), respondents who had "moved home" were proportionally more likely to report good mental health (proportional odds ratios (POR) = 2.02 [95% CI = 1.05, 3.91]) compared to average or poor mental health. Likewise, respondents who had "moved on" were proportionally more likely to report good mental health (POR = 2.64 [95% CI = 0.96, 7.77]. The results suggest that while moving home was an improvement from being displaced, it may have been better to move on, as this yielded superior associations with self-reported mental health.

Cultural antecedents to community: An evaluation of community experience in the United States, Thailand, and Vietnam.

To what extent does community experience differ between low context and high context societies? Prior literature theorizes that community experience consists of two separate, yet highly related concepts: community attachment, an individual's general rootedness to a place, and community satisfaction, how well an individual's community meets their societal needs. We test this conceptualization of community experience across communities in the US and two Southeast Asian nations: Thailand and Vietnam. We argue that Southeast Asian nations constitute "high context" societies with relatively high social integration and solidarity while the US is more individualized and less socially integrated and thus constitutes a "low context" society. Our results provide empirical evidence that individuals' experience of community varies between low and high context societies. These results demonstrate that cultural context continues to matter in regards to the lived experience of community and researchers need to remain vigilant in accounting for such differences as they seek to examine the concept of community more broadly.

Adapting to Hard Times: Family Participation Patterns in Local Thrift Economies.

Using survey data from a western U.S. county (N = 595), we examined how lower, middle, and higher income families negotiate a period of economic stress-the closing of a major employer in the community-through their shopping patterns. Specifically, we examined their participation in local thrift economies such as yard sales and secondhand stores. We found that lower and middle income households shop more frequently at these venues. They also tend to shop more for furniture and clothing, whereas higher income households tend to shop for antiques and trinkets. These relationships varied across the type of thrift economy examined. Overall, findings support the argument that engagement in thrift economies may constitute one mechanism families use during periods of economic stress.

The impact of body mass index and Western advertising and media on eating style, body image and nutrition transition among Jordanian women.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the impact of body mass index (BMI) and Western advertising and media on the stage of the nutrition transition among Jordanian women, and to evaluate their impact on eating styles and body image. DESIGN: A randomised cross-sectional survey that included a variety of culturally measured Likert-type scales and body size images. In addition, BMI was calculated based on measured height and weight. SETTING: In the homes of the participants. The data were collected by female interviewers who worked for the Jordan Department of Statistics. SUBJECTS: The sample was based on a random and representative selection of 800 mostly urban Jordanian women. A pre-test sample of 100 women was also used to validate the instruments. RESULTS: Women tended to agree that they ate based on emotional cues. They had high levels of disordered eating attitudes and behaviours and 42.1% were considered restrained eaters. However, these women also had higher than expected body esteem levels and desired a healthy body size. As expected, being obese was associated with a desire to lose weight, being a restrained and emotional eater, and having more disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. Similarly, Western advertising and media were associated with restrained and emotional eating, desired weight loss, and disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to develop health education materials that explain the influence of obesity on health and the negative psychological and physical consequences of restrained and emotional eating, building on the current cultural preferences of healthy body size. Further implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Validation of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 among a random sample of Jordanian women.

Measuring the impact of westernization on body image is an important element in understanding body dissatisfaction and eating disorders in countries undergoing cultural transitions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3, a measure of societal and media impacts on body image, in a non-western population. Factor analyses identified the same four subscales found in the original validation with high Cronbach's alpha coefficients and Guttman split-half coefficients, and low item cross-loadings. Furthermore, mean score comparisons by demographic variables on each subscale indicated that subscale scores were only affected by age. The results suggest that the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 is a valid and reliable instrument for Jordanian women. The high level of validity and reliability for this population lends support for the possible use of this scale in other non-western populations after appropriate pretesting.

Buffer zone and windbreak effects on spray drift deposition in a simulated wetland.

The amount of agricultural spray that drifts into a wetland from an adjacent crop field is influenced by vegetation along the field boundary or any intentional setback distance (buffer zone) between the sprayer and the edge of the arable field. In this study, spray tracer drift deposits were measured in a simulated wetland area under different conditions of wind speed and buffer zone width. The effect of an artificial windbreak at the upwind edge of the simulated wetland was also evaluated. A level of tolerance of 0.1% of the in-swath spray deposition was established as a no-effect level for the response of aquatic plants to common herbicides. Our results indicate that a vegetated 10-m field margin (eg a fencerow) alone provides adequate protection from herbicide drift into a wetland area under wind conditions normally considered acceptable for spraying. For high winds (> 4m s(-1)) when field spraying would not normally be advised, adequate protection was afforded by the same 10-m margin plus a dense windbreak (25% porosity) or by the margin plus a 20-m buffer zone.