Surviving the next disaster: Assessing the preparedness of community-based organizations

Given the socio-economic structure of society in the United States, community-based organizations (CBOs) play a critical role in providing services to the nation's most disaster-vulnerable populations. Despite this fact, almost no research has been done on their levels of disaster preparedness. In this dissertation, I use mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to explain variation in the levels of disaster preparedness among CBOs. My goal is to understand which organizational characteristics are highly correlated with disaster preparedness and which characteristics seem to have no effect on preparedness. By doing so, I hope to help CBOs---and therefore their clients---become better prepared for disasters.;To complete my dissertation, I rely on data I helped gather while working as a Graduate Research Assistant on BayPrep, a joint research project of the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Center and the Fritz Institute. I utilize factor analysis to condense numerous measures of disaster preparedness into a manageable number of artificial dimensions known as factors. Then, I construct multivariate regression models that examine the effects of organizational characteristics on the previously generated disaster preparedness factors. Finally, I enrich and validate my quantitative results with the qualitative data I gathered while conducting in-depth interviews with the executives of the CBOs in this study. I conclude with a discussion of ways that my research can help CBOs become better prepared for natural disasters as well as important questions that my findings raise about the socio-economic structure of society.