High school students' knowledge and seismic risk perception: The case of Mexico City

A cross-sectional seismic risk perception study was conducted for the case of a high school students in Mexico City. The sample size of the population was N=302. Moreover, a nonprobability sampling was considered in the study. The working hypothesis was considered at a significant level of α=0.05. The relationship between the independent and dependent variables in relation to the psychological issues has been assessed by employing the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Some of the preliminary results are: a) females are more knowledgeable than males on why an earthquake occurs; b) the Morning school students are more knowledgeable than Afternoon school students on the issue related to earthquake prediction and the time to get to safety once a `seismic early warning' is activated; c) 73.8% of the students that participated in some sort of seismic risk educational programmes know the time to get to safety; d) 44% participants that discuss seismic risk issues at home have a defined meeting place after the occurrence of an earthquake; e) when participants do not discuss earthquake preparedness at home, 35.8 of them have a first aid kit; f) 19.6% of the participants experienced `a lot of fear' during the occurrence of an earthquake; and g) 7.28% feel scare when thinking or talk about earthquakes.