The influence of background factors on children’s level of learning about disaster: the case of Bandung metropolitan area

Abstract

After one decade of internalizing disaster management in a national plan, including in disaster education at schools, the disaster awareness level in Indonesia is still low. One of the possible factors that influence the outcome of disaster education is the limited efforts to understand the students’ backgrounds. The main goal of the study was to analyze the potential influence of these background factors, which are the economic conditions, education level, living environment, ethnicity and culture, and religion, on the children’s level of learning about disaster. The study was conducted through a disaster risk reduction program organized by a community-based organization Pahlawan Bencana for thirteen students in Bimasena School in Bandung regency. The methodologies used in this research were: 1) in-depth interview with the parents, 2) assessments through drawings and storytelling, and 3) connection of productive variables of factors with the level of learning. The results of the research suggest that the children’s background factors, especially parental skill possession, dialogue intensity, the neighborhood safety, social cohesion in the community, and religion-based mental preparation, potentially influence the level of learning. These results provide further support for the hypothesis that the effectiveness of the disaster risk reduction program depends on the children’s backgrounds.