Author: Junko Otani: Osaka University, Graduate School of Human Sciences

Public health survey
The Hyogo Health survey was conducted in October each year and the data were compiled as a report book in March. Although basic information, such as demographic and social indicators, was collected throughout the surveys, the questions more specific to some health issues changed over time. The second and third year questions were modified based on the answers to the first year open-ended questions and results of other questions and overall feedback from public health nurses working in the field.

Table 1 shows the response rate of study populations of the Hyogo Health Survey from year 1996 to year 1998 by the housing categories and shows the change of the surveyed housing categories over time.

Table 1: Response Rate of Study Populations of the Hyogo Health Survey 1996 - 1998

	1996		1997		1998
Temporary Shelter Distributed/ Valid	5,315/ 9,315	57.1%	3,644/ 6,451	56.5%	817/ 1,769	46.2%
Public Reconstruction Housing Distributed/ Valid			3,165/ 4,465	70.9%	6,248/ 10,982	56.9%
General Distributed/ Valid	902/ 2,714	33.2%	1,029/ 3,772	27.3%

Number of completed questionnaire/valid responses over the distributed/mailed questionnaire (%: Response rate).
Source: Hyogo Prefecture Department of Health Earthquake-affected household health surveys, 1996-1998.

Media data
Media data were collected, mainly on the fourth and fifth anniversaries of the Earthquake (17 January 1999 and 2000) for ten days each, in addition to the published reports and books produced by the media. Media coverage goes high for about one week before towards the anniversary date of the earthquake every year. I have classified data from late 1998 to January 1999 as the 1999 wave and those from late 1999 to January 2000 as the 2000 wave, following Altheide (1996) who refers to time based samples of media reporting as 'waves'. Among the earthquake programmes, I decided to focus on those covering people's life in the disaster-affected community and did not collect or use those reporting other subjects such as disaster prevention technology. Transcriptions were made of all the media data in the beginning but gradually focused to the coverage of older people, housing, and health by theoretical sampling as I started to do analysis while still collecting more data. Media data were collected in parallel with data collected in the ethnographic fieldwork and interviews.

I collected media data of both TV and newspapers. I videotaped TV coverage. As the total length of videotapes is 67 hours, and as NVivo could then not directly code such multimedia documents as videos, but only link to them, I prepared transcripts from the videos in English so that I could code them as documents. I interviewed a TV reporter and programme director, and a newspaper journalist.

Interviews
I interviewed public officials at the Department of Health of Kobe city, officials at the Department of Health of the West Ward of Kobe City and an official of the Central Ward of Kobe city. Before interviewing the Director of the Department of Health of Kobe City, I interviewed the Director of Planning Division of Welfare for the Elderly of the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare in Tokyo. I interviewed other officials of the West Ward and the Central Ward of Kobe City when I visited their community activities.

Location of field sites for ethnographic work
After I visited several community locations, I selected three community locations by theoretical sampling. Location, conditions of facilities, and types of actors and activities were all considered in the selection process, as were the different types of housing schemes such as individual apartments, a group house, and Silver Housing Scheme because it would illustrate housing aspects of my research question of whether community generation differs by housing and how and if loneliness can be alleviated by housing. Table 2 summarizes the three research sites of the field work.

Table 2: Three research sites of the fieldwork

	TSH: Haruyama	PRH 1: Natsu-Aki	PRH 2: Fuyuyama
Location	Suburban	Suburban	Urban
Kobe city	West-ward	West-ward	Central-ward
Building type	Nagaya Hutted apartments	High rise	High rise
Number of household units	250	700 (11 buildings) at Natsuyama PRH and 500 (3 buildings) at Akiyama PRH	550 (2 buildings) in total
Silver housing			200 (lower levels of one of the buildings)
Leader	Volunteer nurse	A woman who is a welfare commissioner and chief of the self-governing body and of volunteer group of neighbouring community	A male chief of the self-governing body
Methods	Participant observation I shadowed and worked with a public health nurse for a home visit.   I worked as a volunteer waitress at a community tea shop.	Shadow a community leader I attended various community activities such as lunch programme, birthday party, day-service for the handicapped / older people. I accompanied a community leader for a home visit.  I interviewed a chief of self-governing body.	Observation at events I attended several community activities such as a breakfast programme with local Catholic church, health promotion programme with Health dept of municipal government. I interviewed a chief of self-governing body and Life Support Advisors (LSAs).

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