Relationship between Teachers’ Awareness of Disaster Prevention and Concerns about Disaster Preparedness

: Disaster preparedness in schools is critical for the health and well-being of students and staff. To enhance disaster preparedness, awareness of disaster prevention should be raised among teachers. The aim of the current study was to assess disaster prevention awareness among teachers and to clarify the relationship between disaster prevention awareness and concern regarding disaster preparedness. Teachers from special needs schools, for which disaster preparedness is particularly important, were selected. Study questionnaires were sent to 1310 schools for children with special health care needs across 47 Japanese prefectures. Five-hundred-and-thirty-one complete responses were obtained. The disaster preparedness in the schools was insufﬁcient. Teachers were concerned about child management, life saving, life maintenance, evacuation shelter management, and school management. There was a positive correlation between disaster prevention awareness and concern about disaster ( r = 0.217, p -value = 0.000). The disaster awareness scale items “A sense of crisis about disaster” and “Anxiety” were positively correlated with concern about disaster, whereas “Imagining the disaster situation” was negatively correlated with concern about disaster. The current study analyzed the relationship between disaster prevention awareness and concern regarding disaster preparedness, which is relevant for the practice and indicates the importance of imagination strengthening.


Introduction
Preparedness for natural disasters is the key to ensure an efficient and timely response of individuals and organizations to them and to minimize the damage they cause. The preparedness of schools for natural disasters is especially important to ensure the safety and well-being of students and staff [1,2]. Recommendations for schools' disaster preparation include ensuring that the learning facilities are safe, preparing for disasters, resilience training, and reducing the disaster risk [3]. The measures for risk reduction in schools should be comprehensive and systematic. In Japan, the disaster preparedness of schools has been prioritized by the National Authorities and is included in the legislative framework [4]. The vast majority of public schools in Japan have been designated as potential evacuation sites and shelters in case of a natural disaster, further increasing the complexity of the measures required to ensure schools' disaster preparedness [5]. Moreover, public schools have also been used as evacuation sites in other Asian countries [6,7]. Reportedly, the involvement in both children's education and shelter operations after a disaster is stressful for teachers [8]. Further, teachers have not been educated in how to operate shelters [9]. Such lack of training, coupled with the attendant stressors of their job, may lead to teachers' exhaustion and burnout [10]. The development of an educational program aiming to improve the gap and alleviate teachers' exhaustion has been considered [11]; however, it was conducted only in the context of a trial and not during normal teaching activities. Teachers are very busy and often have an overwhelming workload [12]. Digitalization of teachers' education may facilitate the training process of busy teachers [13]. Notably, teachers' education on disasters has not been highly prioritized. In order for teachers to recognize the need for disaster training, the awareness of disaster prevention should be raised. Increasing individual awareness of a problem is essential for the implementation of countermeasures [14]. There is a possibility that disaster prevention awareness can be raised by clarifying specific associated activities and situations and engaging teachers in specific events.
Disasters and emergencies have a large impact on individuals with disabilities, especially children [15][16][17]. Moreover, ensuring the disaster preparedness of schools for children with special health care needs is particularly important, because in such schools there is a high percentage of people who need support and equipment in the event of a disaster. The creation of an efficient plan for disaster management, including children with special health care needs, would help to achieve better outcomes [18].
Disaster prevention awareness may be influenced by demographic and cultural factors as well as by personal experiences and attitudes [19,20]. Many teachers have not previously experienced a disaster [21]. Therefore, teachers need education to raise awareness of disaster prevention. However, the definition of disaster prevention awareness is ambiguous. Further, the education for disaster prevention awareness includes various measures, such as disaster education awareness and even disaster recovery awareness [22][23][24]. Education to raise disaster awareness is a valuable tool for risk reduction and disaster preparedness [25]. Due to the vagueness of the definition of disaster prevention awareness, the impact of education was not systematically assessed [26]. It is important to identify factors that may improve disaster prevention awareness to specifically promote it. Effective information delivery on disaster preparedness and response may have positive implications for the psychological well-being of individuals [27]. Concerns about disaster preparedness point to a gap between given knowledge (information provision) and actions that should be closed [25]. Education to detect this gap can raise awareness of disaster prevention. However, the relationship between disaster prevention awareness and concern regarding disaster readiness is unclear. The aim of the current study was to clarify the relationship between items of disaster prevention awareness and concern regarding disaster preparedness.

Study Subjects and Survey Distribution
All teachers should be prepared for disaster mitigation, but teachers in schools for children with special health care needs should be even more sensitive to preparedness than regular teachers, because, in these schools, there is a high percentage of people who need support and equipment in the event of a disaster. Therefore, teachers working in schools for children with special health care needs, mainly managers, were included in the current study and were targeted before general teachers. In Japan, 47 prefectures have listed public schools for children with special health care needs, excluding branch schools.
The study was conducted between 20 November 2020 and 18 December 2020. Overall, 1310 schools were contacted, and one mail survey set was sent per school. The number of collected responses was 604 (46.1%), whereas the number of valid responses was 531 (87.9% of the collected responses). The surveys, in which all questions were answered, were considered valid.

Ethical Approval/Informed Consent
The study was approved by the Ethical Committee for Epidemiology of Hiroshima University (approval number E-2224). Responding to the survey was considered an indication of informed consent.

Disaster Prevention Awareness Scale and Concern Regarding Readiness
The disaster prevention awareness scale developed by . This scale is specific in terms of its subscales. Further, the scale can be easily utilized to plan an interventional approach based on each item, and it contributes to future educational support plans and evaluations. For the disaster prevention awareness scale, scores for each of the disaster prevention awareness items A ("Imagining the disaster situation"), B ("A sense of crisis about disaster"), C ("Other-oriented"), D ("Interest in disasters"), and E ("Anxiety"), as well as the total score were calculated.
To assess their concern regarding readiness, participants were asked whether they are worried about certain aspects related to disaster situations and preparation (about their degree of concern regarding disaster response), and we used a previously published questionnaire [21]. The questions focused on the aspects "Child management", "Life saving", "Life maintenance", "Evacuation shelter management", and "School management". The replies were treated as categorical data. The four options were defined as follows: "1-Not worried" and "2-Not worried too much" were defined as "Not worried", whereas "3-A little worried" and "4-Very worried" were defined as "Worried".
Based on two studies, prevention and preparedness were defined as "actions to minimize damage" and "readiness to minimize damage", respectively.

Statistical Analysis
The responses of the teachers were categorized and presented under the following categories: demographic and social characteristics, questions related to the school's disaster prevention status, and questions related to the host community. The differences in the degree of concern about disaster were assessed with the Chi-squared goodness-of-fit test to determine whether the distribution of cases (level of worries about disaster) differed significantly between the groups. To determine the degree of concern, the choices were added as scores for each category. The average scores for disaster prevention awareness and degree of concern about disaster were calculated. Frequencies and percentages were generated for qualitative variables, while means and standard deviations (SD) were generated for quantitative variables. The Pearson correlation coefficient was generated to assess the relationship between disaster prevention awareness and degree of concern about disaster. All statistical analyses were performed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 20.

Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics of the Participants
The demographic and social characteristics of the respondents are presented in Table 1. The average experience of the teachers was 29.12 years, and they had been working in various special support schools for an average of 21.02 years. Moreover, 71.2% of the respondents were already at the managerial level (principals and vice-principals). Most participants (78.7%) were male. Furthermore, 63.8% had never experienced natural disasters. The percentage of teachers in high, elementary, and junior high schools was 87.2%, 85.1%, and 84.2%, respectively. Among the participating teachers, 69.1% taught students with intellectual impairments. Regarding facilities available for disaster management in schools, 65.3%, 26.4%, and 49.7% of the teachers claimed that they had secured power, communication, and a toilet (a manhole or simple toilet), respectively. However, 46.5% did not have facilities, such as LP gas, that could be secured and used in the event of a disaster.

Questions Related to the Schools' Disaster Prevention Status and Host Community
The responses to questions related to the schools' disaster prevention status and host community are presented in Table 2. The majority of respondents (68.9%) claimed the school they worked at is not designated as a welfare shelter. Moreover, 62.3% of the study participants did not think that their school is ready to accept residents in the event of a disaster. Among the respondents, 87.8% agreed that their school interacts with local residents. Further, 84.6% of the respondents had not carried out any training under the assumption that their school would be an evacuation center, and 75.0% claimed their community is not involved in their schools' management. Even though 54.9% of the study participants stated their schools do not have a stockpile warehouse, 89.5% claimed that their schools have plastic bottles as stockpiles for drinking water.  Table 3 shows the Chi-squared test results for the degree of concern about disaster. The p-values for all questions raised in this study regarding the degree of concern about disasters were <0.001. The Chi-squared values ranged from 77.606 to 407.203, indicating a significant difference between the groups of teachers worried about disaster and not worried about disaster. The values were clearly higher in the group worried about disasters (367-498 individuals) than in the group not worried about disasters (33-164 individuals). Table 3. Characteristics of the degree of concern about disaster.

Questions Related to Disaster Prevention Awareness and Degree of Concern about Disaster
The average scores for disaster prevention awareness and degree of concern about disaster are presented in Table 4. The mean score for the imagination of a disaster situation was 14.01, whereas the scores for a sense of crisis, being other-oriented, interest in disasters, anxiety, and the total score for disaster prevention awareness were 19.94, 16.05, 18.47, 14.59, and 83.09, respectively. Further, the mean score for child management was 19.17, whereas the scores for life saving, life maintenance, evacuation shelter management, school management, and the total degree of concern about disaster were 12.41, 13.30, 15.49, 12.53, and 72.91, respectively. Table 4. Mean scores for disaster prevention awareness and degree of concern about disaster.

Major Categories
Sub-Categories (Scores) Mean ± SD

Disaster Prevention Awareness Scale
Imagination of the disaster situation (A score) 14

Relationship between Disaster Prevention Awareness and the Degree of Concern about Disaster
The relationship between disaster prevention awareness and the degree of concern about disaster is presented in Table 5. There was a weak but significant positive correlation between disaster prevention awareness and degree of concern about disaster (r = 0.217, p-value = 0.000). Further, among all components of disaster prevention awareness, the sense of crisis in times of disaster had the highest significant correlation with the components of the degree of concern about disasters (p-value < 0.001 for all items, and r ranging from 0.182 for school management to 0.283 for overall disaster prevention awareness). Therefore, the sense of crisis in times of disaster seemed to be affected by the items of concern about disaster more than the remaining components of disaster prevention awareness. Interest in disasters seemed not to be influenced by the degree of concern about disaster or its components, and there was no significant correlation between it and any of the components of the degree of concern about disaster (p-value > 0.05). Table 5. Correlation between disaster prevention awareness and degree of concern about disaster.

Discussion
Teachers are involved not only in children's education but also in the management of evacuation centers at schools that become shelters after the disaster [31,32]. Therefore, teachers need to be prepared for disasters [33]. However, teacher education does not include disaster preparedness training [9]. The creation and evaluation of teacher education programs had been considered previously [34], but the training had been conducted only within the context of a trial. To promote teacher education on disaster prevention, it is necessary to raise awareness of disasters and to identify factors that may promote it. Disaster prevention awareness is defined as the degree to which an individual is aware on a daily basis that information, materials, and social preparation for disasters are necessary [30,35]. In this study, we used a scale with five scores: imagination of the disaster situation, sense of crisis, being other oriented, interest in disasters, and anxiety. We used this scale due to its previously demonstrated suitability for the Japanese population. First, our study assessed the actual situation of disaster prevention awareness among teachers. Second, it clarified the relationship between items of disaster prevention awareness and concern regarding disaster preparedness. This survey targets teachers, but first of all it targets teachers from high-priority schools for special needs, because they need to be especially sensitive to disaster preparedness. This is due to the particular importance of preparing children enrolled in special needs schools for disasters [25,36].
We have previously identified factors that influence disaster preparation in Japanese schools, including the role of study participants (teachers versus parents) and whether they have previously experienced a disaster [21]. As in previous studies [21], many faculty members examined in the current study had never evacuated. The schools were equipped with in-house power generation, telecommunications, and drinking water, but many realized they were not well prepared. In addition, local residents were not involved in school management. In the context of school events, there were many schools where residents, teachers, and children interacted. Allowing evacuees to run shelters and allowing teachers to rely on children have been discussed [21]. Children in special needs schools in particular need a great degree of support. Understanding the condition of children by residents should be facilitated. This is in line with previous publications demonstrating the need for effective communication in disaster risk education [37]. In the current study, we focused on the role of another potentially important factor: concern regarding disaster preparedness. Teachers have been shown to be loyal and responsible [11]. Even students aspiring to become teachers were shown to be sensitive to the "duties of a teacher" [11,34]. Many teachers were significantly concerned about all aspects of disasters (child management, life saving, life maintenance, evacuation shelter management, and school management). Teachers' concerns showed the highest average score in "child management" in times of disasters. For example, it is unlikely that children who need special care would be able to cope, if traffic was cut off, and they were staying at school. The cooperation with residents and school disaster preparedness were not sufficient, indicating that teachers' concerns were reasonable [36].
The degree of disaster prevention awareness of teachers in schools for children with special healthcare needs was compared to that of administrative staff in a study by the National Research Institute [28]. Teachers had the same scores for "Imagination of the disaster situation" and "Interest in disasters", lower scores for "A sense of crisis" and being "Other-oriented", and a higher score for "Anxiety". In Japan, evacuation centers are generally operated by administrative staff. However, when a school becomes a shelter, it may be provisionally run by teachers. Teachers had a low sense of crisis and being other-oriented (of helping each other). However, they had a high level of anxiety, which could be attributed to the lack of a clear strategy how to manage their responsibilities during a time of an emergency or disaster. Under normal circumstances, teachers are not supposed to consult with residents, and no consultation training has been included in teachers' education [11], which impedes their preparation for a potential disaster.
In the current study, we found that "A sense of crisis about disaster" was positively correlated with concern regarding disaster preparedness. However, "Imagining the disaster situation" was negatively correlated with concern regarding disaster preparedness. Notably, the ability to imagine future events may help to predict and avoid dangerous situations [38]. The psychological aspects of disaster awareness were previously identified as a factor that may influence disaster preparedness [30]. It was shown that the ingenuity to promote imagination is important for education that raises teachers' awareness of disasters. Case studies developed for prospective teachers might also be effective for teachers. When a set situation is specifically imagined, it reminds an individual of an actionable response. Interestingly, in the current study, "Anxiety" was correlated with measures related to concern regarding disaster preparedness. It was previously demonstrated that the sense of crisis and anxiety should not be too high [39], indicating that pronounced worry about children might negatively affect disaster preparation. Since concern is consistent among many teachers, disaster preparedness is necessary to reduce concerns and to alleviate the sense of crisis.
The findings of the current study suggest the need for comprehensive educational efforts, aiming to address areas that are of particular concern to schools' staff members. The following areas presented in this study were of interest to teachers: child management, life saving, life maintenance, evacuation shelter management, and school management. In particular, the findings indicated that interventions that boost imagination in areas of child management in times of disasters may be effective.
The current study has several limitations, including its cross-sectional design and the use of a self-report measure. Activities that reduce concerns and alleviate the sense of crisis should be developed. The current study did not target teachers in general but rather teachers in special needs schools, who should be particularly sensitive to disaster preparedness. In comparison with general teachers, differences between teachers' personal characteristics, their stage of life, and their positions should be further examined and validated.

Conclusions
In this study, to raise teachers' awareness of disaster prevention, we clarified the relationship between disaster prevention awareness and concerns about disaster prevention measures. Teachers from special needs schools were selected. Many teachers were concerned about child management, life saving, life maintenance, evacuation shelter management, and school management. Most concerning among these areas was child management. In comparison to general staff, the teachers had a high level of anxiety, which could be attributed to the lack of a clear strategy on how to manage their responsibilities during a time of an emergency or disaster. We found that "A sense of crisis about disaster" was positively correlated with concern regarding disaster preparedness. However, "Imagining the disaster situation" was negatively correlated with concern regarding disaster preparedness. Boosting teachers' imagination about disaster may help teachers be more prepared and less concerned. Presumably, a decrease in concerns may reduce the sense of crisis and lead to teacher stability. This study identified a relationship between disaster prevention awareness and concern regarding disaster preparation readiness that is of high relevance for the practice. For the stability of teachers, disaster preparedness education is recommended. Funding: This research was funded by the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Program (KAKENHI), Japan, grant number 19K11290 (to K.S.). The funding source played no role in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; and decision to submit the article for publication.

Institutional Review Board Statement:
The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Ethical Committee for Epidemiology of Hiroshima University (protocol code E-2224 from 12 October 2020).

Informed Consent Statement:
Responding to the survey was considered an indication of informed consent.

Data Availability Statement:
The data are not publicly available due to confidentiality reasons.