Assessing natural disaster survivor evacuation attitudes to inform social policy

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"The axiology was premised by a concern for people and evacuation effectiveness during natural disasters, which is a good fit within an international journal focussed on sociology and social policy. Although the study took place in USA, natural disasters and evacuation importance are universal. The ontology surrounding the research was theory driven, deductive, with heavy emphasis on a priori models. The epistemology was driven by the goal to transform implicit behaviors into explicit indicators, which could be measured and used to improve social policy (as compared to merely describing or understanding human behaviors). The ethical basis applied here was empirical, quantitative, whereby human perceptions (collected in surveys) were validated using statistical techniques, which is the opposite when taking a constructivist ideology where participants interpret the meanings of factors and behaviors." (p. 494)

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