Parents, Self-efficacy, and Preparedness

What is it about?

Disasters occur without warning and can have devastating consequences. Emergency preparedness can reduce negative effects. It is especially important that parents prepare, as children are particularly vulnerable after disasters. The results of this study indicate that emergency preparedness is, as hypothesized, related to parental status. The number of children was also related to perceived threat and that perceived threat partially explains the relationship between perception of parents (number of children) and preparedness. In addition, it was shown that adults were able to translate that threat into higher levels of preparedness when they believed they had sufficient levels of self-efficacy to do so. For those individuals with low self-efficacy scores who did not believe that they had the ability to prepare, perceived threat, even at high levels, did not predict preparedness. This echoes Lindell & Hwang’s finding that perception of threat might be a necessary step to preparedness, but it is not a sufficient one.

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Photo by Chris Gallagher on Unsplash

Photo by Chris Gallagher on Unsplash

Why is it important?

These results have implications for intervention—we need to improve peoples’ (especially parents’) sense of self-efficacy (specifically emergency preparedness self-efficacy in this case) in order for them to respond to perceived threat.