The Event
The December 2004 Sumatran-Andaman earthquake was one of the most seismically powerful events in
world history. The resulting tsunami affected coastlines across the entire Indian Ocean. The
greatest loss of life and property damage occurred along the west coast of Aceh, Indonesia.
An estimated 169,000 individuals died as a result of the tsunami. The property destroyed by the disaster
was worth an estimated 4.5 billion dollars. The post tsunami reconstruction effort, which was designed
to rebuild and improve destroyed infrastructure, is one of the largest reconstruction projects
ever undertaken in a developing country setting.
Baseline and Follow-Up Surveys
The baseline sample for the STAR survey consists of individuals living in households in Aceh and North Sumatra that were located,
at the time of the tsunami, in a kabupaten, or district, with a coastline vulnerable to tsunami inundation.
With help from Statistics Indonesia, we sought to interview all members of targeted households
in the first post-disaster survey - STAR1 - which began in May 2005 and extended over the following 12 months.
Our intention was to interview every household member age 11 and older at the time of the interview, and to obtain
information about each child younger than 11 by interviewing the child’s parent or primary care-giver.
A total of 28,372 respondents in 7,157 households comprise the sample.
Through the extraordinary work of our field team, we interviewed 96% of those people.
We tracked respondents throughout Aceh and North Sumatra as well as to other provinces on the islands of Sumatra and Java.
We have completed seven follow-ups of STAR1 respondents, which we refer to sequentially
as STAR2 through STAR8. We fielded the first five follow-ups annually.
STAR6, the last annual follow-up, began in 2009.
STAR7, the 10y follow-up, was fielded beginning in late 2014.
STAR8, the 15y follow-up, was fielded beginning in 2019.
A random sub-sample of one-quarter of the respondents have participated in the
Enhanced Assessment of Biomarkers and Cognition (STAR-EABC)
which were conducted after STAR7 in 2017-2018
and after STAR8 in 2023-2024.
Study Design
STAR is designed as a longitudinal survey. In addition to tracking
and interviewing all STAR1 respondents in subsequent follow-ups, we also interview all members of STAR
households in each wave. Many STAR respondents moved after the tsunami, and many of those
who moved joined other family members in different households. The design of STAR means that these new household
members are added to the survey. Many men whose wives perished in the tsunami went on to remarry, as did some
women who lost their husbands. We have interviewed their wives and husbands. All children born to STAR1 respondents
after the tsunami are also tracked for interview in every wave.
The STAR individual and household questionnaires cover broad dimensions of demographic characteristics, socioeconomic
measures, and health behaviors and outcomes. The combination of rich individual and household data
allows a rich characterization of social and economic context.
This information is enriched with assessments of physical, mental and cognitive health.
Funding
We are grateful for financial support from the National Institute for Child Health
and Human Development (HD051970, HD052762) the National Institute on Aging (AG031266, AG065395), the MacArthur
Foundation (05-85158-000), the National Science Foundation (CMS-0527763), the Hewlett Foundation, the Wellcome Trust (OPOH 106853/A/15/Z) and the
World Bank.
Key findings
For an overview of key findings, click here.
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