One of my duties at NCFR is to field questions from the media about family research. Sometimes this can be quite challenging, because often the question is borne from media buzz from some current event.  Our journals' contents are quite rich, so I can usually get them on their way with something pretty quickly.  However, sometimes the question is so current--and so specific--that there is just no exact study that fills the bill. I explain to the reporter that peer-reviewed research is time-intensive process. From the time an event happens until it can be studied and then published into an article, a few years can and do pass by.

A perfect example of this happened with the latest issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family and the subject of Hurricane Katrina's effect on families.  In the weeks following Katrina, the demand for this information was strong. Of course, we had nothing that specific that soon. I was able to direct them to articles about family trauma in general and to a few experts on families and disasters. I knew it would be awhile before Katrina research started to come in--but it has!

In the June 2011 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, there is an article titled "Breakup of New Orleans Households After Hurricane Katrina" by Michael Rendall.  What I would've done to have this study in the Fall of 2005. Since the abstract is in the public domain, I will reprint it here in italics: 

Theory and evidence on disaster-induced population displacement have focused on individual and population-subgroup characteristics. Less is known about impacts on households. I estimate excess incidence of household breakup resulting from Hurricane Katrina by comparing a probability sample of pre-Katrina New Orleans resident adult household heads and non-household heads (N = 242), traced just over a year later, with a matched sample from a nationally representative survey over an equivalent period. One in three among all adult non-household heads, and one in two among adult children of household heads, had separated from the household head 1 year post-Katrina. These rates were, respectively, 2.2 and 2.7 times higher than national rates. A 50% higher prevalence of adult children living with parents in pre-Katrina New Orleans than nationally increased the hurricane's impact on household breakup. Attention to living arrangements as a dimension of social vulnerability in disaster recovery is suggested.

I've often wondered--just how long is the lag time between an event and a published study?  In this journal--and this event--the answer is almost 6 years. High quality science takes time.

Incidentally, to read this article, and ALL our research articles archived back to 1938, join NCFR at the "Professional 2" level here.  And conference goers?  We are currenting pulling together a symposium called "Storms, Spills, Floods: Families and Disaster."  Information about conference registration is here.