Effect of educational pamphlets of disasters dealing on increasing individual's awareness

Aims. Disasters take millions of lives each year and cause large financial damages. In all disasters, the first persons who try to rescue the others are who present at the scene of disaster. In this research, the effect of educational pamphlets for responding disasters was surveyed. Methods. This is a pre- and post-test research, which was done in Afsariyeh, Vesal-e-shirazi and Pasdaran regions of Tehran. Some blocks and families living in these places were selected randomly. Then, some of (15-65 years old) people from selected blocks filled in questionnaires. The sample size, as per scientific principles was 380 persons in each area, which was selected by cluster sampling. For collecting data, a questionnaire with 20 four-itemed questions in 8 parameters (earthquake, fire, flood, frost, chemical dangerous materials, thunder, fire front, volcano) was used. At the end of the interview, the pamphlets were distributed among the target people. After two weeks, again the same persons filled in the questionnaires. Then the data were collected and evaluated. Results. 53.4% of samples were women. Average of women was 26.1 and men was 27 years old. 35.5% of the samples were in district 3, 31.8% in district 6 and 32.7 in district 14. Maximum awareness before distributing the pamphlets referred to flood and minimum to foster. The maximum awareness after distributing the pamphlets referred to volcano and minimum to fire. Conclusion. Educational pamphlets of disaster dealing increase the awareness of people in all fields.