PRESS RELEASES

The Public Readiness Index (PRI)

December 15, 2006

The Council for Excellence in Government released its Public Readiness Index (PRI) in December 2006 as a "report card on the American public's readiness".  The PRI was designed to be a barometer of how prepared individuals and families in a given community are for a major public emergency --- such as natural disaster, a public health emergency or terrorist attack.  The PRI was developed by the Council for Excellence in Government with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The Council worked with a number of experts and stakeholders in the development of the PRI.  The Council formed a PRI Advisory Committee with a number of homeland security experts including Frank Cilluffo, Director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) and Associate Vice President for Homeland Security; Jan Lane, Deputy Director of HSPI, George Washington University; Susan Neely, former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Joe Becker, Senior Vice President, Preparedness and Response from the American Red Cross; Chet Lunner, Acting Director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of State and Local Government Coordination; Kristin Gossel, Director of the Ready Campaign at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and Scott Keeter, Director of Research at the Pew Research Center.  Emergency managers from Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Miami-Dade County, Harris County, TX, Boston and Philadelphia were also consulted in the development of the PRI.

The national public opinion research organization, Schulman, Ronca, & Bucuvalas, Inc. (SRBI) who was responsible for finalizing the design, piloting the questionnaire, conducting surveys, analyzing the survey findings and constructing a benchmark index against which communities could measure their public readiness in the event of an emergency.  SRBI conducted the National Public Readiness Survey by telephone among a national probability sample of 1,000 non-institutionalized Americans aged 18 or older.  In addition to the national survey, the survey was also conducted among community samples of 400 adults in each of four major American cities: Chicago, Miami/Dade County, New York City and San Francisco.  The telephone interviews were conducted by SRBI between May 4, 2006 and June 10, 2006.

The final report: "Are We Ready?  Introducing the Public Readiness Index: A Survey-Based Tool to Measure the Preparedness of Individual, Families and Communities" was released by the Council for Excellence in Government on December 14, 2006.  The report can be downloaded from the website: www.whatsyourrq.org.  The website also allows individuals to test their personal Readiness Quotient (RQ) which was developed from the findings on the Public Readiness Index.