The Effect of Basic Disaster Awareness Education Given to Adolescents on Disaster Literacy and Earthquake Anxiety Levels: A Pre-Test Post-Test Randomized Controlled Study

Turkey is a high-risk country for natural disasters. Adolescents constitute an important target group for disaster preparedness education. This randomized controlled study evaluated the effect of structured disaster awareness education on both disaster literacy and earthquake anxiety.

Two-stage randomization was used: schools were assigned by lottery to intervention/control groups (cluster randomization), and then students within each school were selected by stratified simple random sampling according to grade level (5th-8th grade). The intervention group received 3 weekly sessions covering earthquake preparedness, fire and flood safety, and storm/landslide/avalanche hazards. Educational methods included lecture, Q&A, hands-on demonstrations (drop-cover-hold-on drill, fire extinguisher use, disaster bag contents), brainstorming, gamification, and interactive learning activities.

One week before and one week after the education program, both groups completed the same data collection tools. Statistical analyses included independent t-test, paired t-test, and effect size calculation (Cohen d, r, r²). Statistical significance was set at p<0.05.