Introduction
The purpose of their present research is to assess the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the public trust levels towards government officials. The research applies the trust concept to and measured in dwellers of several counties within Mississippi and Louisiana. The authors assume that the level of trust is linked to the perceived speed of recovery after Hurricane Katrina. In addition, the prediction is that low levels of trust correlate with poor government performance in relation to the events of Katrina.
Main body
The methodology was comprised of survey data analysis and concept analysis. The empirical analysis is typical of studies aimed to assess socio-political constructs (Nicols & Picolu, 2013). The questionnaire includes five questions from the nationwide evaluation that assess the feelings and expectations of the particular respondents about their government. The sample consists of 2,333 randomly selected citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi.
The results reveal that those who suffered financial or other losses during the event have lower levels of trust towards the government. The low political trust also positively correlates with an estimated time of recovery. The authors conclude that certain improvements to the governmental organization are to be made as 52% percent of respondents have pessimistic evaluations of their work.
Conclusion
As for the limitations, one can name the low generalizability of the results as the analyzed responses represent only the opinion of the two states. The strengths include a well-established methodology and a large sample of respondents that ensures validity. The research can be of assistance as a source of data on trust and assessment of socio-political concepts. For instance, the research an applicable mitigation tools appear to require more data on the population (Labib & Read, 2015).
Reference
Nicholls, K., & Picou, J. S. (2013). The impact of Hurricane Katrina on trust in government. Social Science Quarterly, 94(2), 344-361.
Labib, A., & Read, M. (2015). A hybrid model for learning from failures: The Hurricane Katrina disaster. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(21), 7869-7881.