A Study on Impact of Flood Disaster and Quality of Life among the Flood Victims

수재민의 수해로 인한 영향과 삶의 질에 관한 연구

Purpose: This study was performed to identify the extent of flood damage, the quality of life(QOL) and their relationships to flood victims. Method: The subjects of this study were 248(men 100, women 148) who live around seven areas in K province impacted by Typhoon Rusa. Data was collected between February 25 and March 21, 2003 by structured questionnaires. The instruments were composed of two parts. The extent of flood damage were the impacts of daily living by revised from Ginexi et aI.(2000). QOL was used to WHOQOL BREF Korean Version by Min et al.(2002). The SPSS program was used for its descriptive, reliability, and correlation analysis. Result: The means of the extent of flood damage were: daily living 1.88, economy 4.60, and health 3.75. The mean of total QOL was 2.95: social domain 3.29, overall satisfaction 3.09, physical domain 3.06, psychological domain 2.95, and environmental domain 2.68. The negative correlations were between the Impact of daily living and Total QOL(r=-.143, p<.05), Physical QOL(r=-.220, p<.01) and Overall satisfaction (r=-141, p<.05). Conclusion: This study has learned that the impact of the flood had negative effects on the flood victims quality of life, and the difficulties they faced in their daily lives. Further research will be needed to explore influencing factors on QOL in disaster victims.