Sex difference and earthquake experience effects on earthquake victims

Abstract

This study investigated whether sex differences and earthquake experiences affect the earthquake victims as to their future expectations, their reactions during the earthquake and their first feelings after the earthquake. Especially, conditional relationships among reaction, expectation and first feeling by sex and earthquake experiences were investigated. Graphical Log-linear models were used in order to determine the interaction structure among the variables taken into consideration in this study. A survey of earthquake victims in Kocaeli and Adapazari (two cities in North-Western, Turkey) was conducted to discover the destructive effects of the earthquake. For this purpose a questionnaire of 25 questions was given to the 800 people in Kocaeli and Adapazari where the most destruction and dead people were to be found. As a result of this investigation, it was found that sex and earthquake experience play an important role on future expectations, reaction during earthquake and first feelings after the earthquake.