Preliminary earthquake risk perception: The case of secondary school students of a seismic region of Mexico

The paper presents some preliminary results on earthquake and other hazards risk ceptions of students of a secondary school who live in a highly seismic region of Oaxaca, Mexico. A transversal study has been conducted and the sample size was 194. The questionnaires have been administered in October 2014. Some of the most relevant conclusions of the study so far are the following: a). 7 in 10 students effectively know that they are living in a highly seismic region; b). 7 in 10 students do not know what to do in case of an earthquake (i.e., when they are in the classroom); c). Earthquake risk has been regarded as the highest cause of concern of the students (32%; 156/194) followed by ‘Crime’ (23%; 111/194), floods came last with only 8%; d) 9 in 10 students would like to learn more about earthquake preparedness and 4 in 10 of them would prefer to do it in school. Further research is being conducted on inferential statistics.