we hypothesize that the type of disaster , and thus the investigation of its unique characteristics , are important for a better understanding of perceived post- and peritraumatic stress levels in survivors . additionally personal and situational characteristics are also likely to play a role in how survivors think and feel during the event . therefore , in this exploratory study , a selection of individual characteristics ( gender , education , age ) , event characteristics ( time since event , fatalities , injuries ) , peritraumatic emotional and cognitive factors ( emotional stress , risk perception ) and posttraumatic stress symptoms were assessed across different types of disasters , with data collected from several countries . the study described in this paper is part of a larger cross - cultural multi - centre research project called besecu ( behaviour , security , culture ) , with the following centres participating : greifswald , germany ; london , uk ; barcelona , spain ; warsaw , poland ; hamburg , germany ; prague , czech republic ; stockholm , sweden and izmir , turkey . of interest were emergency events that met the following criteria : ( 1 ) occurred within approximately 10 years prior to the research interview , concentrated in a particular time and space ; ( 2 ) concerned an identifiable hazard that posed a physical threat but of a non - infectious kind ( i.e. , excluding emergency events such as epidemics ) ; ( 3 ) the threat was posed to many lives and/or property ; ( 4 ) the emergency services attended the scene ; and ( 5 ) a full or partial evacuation of the affected structure(s ) was attempted , either by the victims or by official agents . a variety of events occurring in the participating centres countries met the above criteria : i.e. , czech republic floods in 2002 ; collapse of buildings such as the katowice trade hall roof collapse in poland , 2006 and the collapse of a multi - storey residential building in spain , 2006 ; severe fires in multi - storey residential or public buildings across europe such as the gothenburg discotheque fire in sweden , 1998 or a fire in a hamburg hospital in germany , 2007 ; and the 7/7 london bombings in the uk , 2005 . most injuries ( around half of the participants ) had incurred during terror attacks and collapses of buildings . in fires , about 25% and in floods about 10% of participants were injured . fatalities during the incidents in the direct surrounding of participants were reported in all cases of terrorist attack and collapse of a building and in nearly half of all fire events . floods were reported as having caused no fatalities in the surrounding of the interviewed victims . recruitment was performed in each centre separately , using a combination of word - of - mouth campaigns and advertising campaigns conducted via the media , self - help groups and the emergency services . adult survivors were invited to contact the researchers if they wished to take part in an interview . participation was restricted to persons who had directly experienced the emergency event  bystanders and relatives of victims were excluded . also excluded were persons who had survived incidents which turned out not to match all of the aforementioned event criteria . finally , four participants were excluded due to the fact that the respective disasters did not happen in any of the countries of the participating centres . there was an almost even split of females ( 51.4% ) and males ( 48.6% ) . concerning education , 25.3% of all participants had a university degree , 21.8% were educated to only primary level and 43.7% to secondary education level . eleven percent of participants had a migrant background but no significant differences were found between migrants and natives regarding gender , age , education , or event type . when participants agreed to take part in the study , a comprehensive interview was conducted about emotional , behavioural , and cognitive responses during the disaster ( results of the content of survivors narratives can be found in grimm , hulse , preiss , & schmidt , in press ) . furthermore , a set of psychological instruments were applied and socio - demographic and incident - related characteristics were assessed . the interview procedure borrowed techniques from the cognitive interview ( fisher & geiselman , 1992 ) to help participants mentally recreate the past event ; the entire interview lasted on average 90 min . after revisiting the event in the interview , participants were asked to retrospectively rate their emotional stress and risk perception at the stage when they realized that they were actually experiencing a disaster . they did this on a 4-point scale with zero indicating no stress/ risk and four indicating high stress/ risk . asking participants to retrospectively rate their emotions and cognitions a few years after they experienced them is not ideal as their current state and beliefs could bias their recollections of past states ( robinson & clore , 2002 ) . nevertheless , there is research which indicates that memory for emotion - related experiences is more resistant to decaying over time ( e.g. , burke , heuer , & reisberg , 1992 ; ritchey , dolcos , & cabeza , 2008 ) . furthermore , there is some experimental evidence that retrospective ratings , at least of emotion , might provide reasonable approximations of momentary ratings ( barrett , 1997 ) . in addition , it was expected that the interview and its context reinstatement memory aids would make the relevant past states more accessible . thus , while bearing the potential for recall - related biases in mind , the emotional stress and risk ratings were included to explore peritraumatic states . current posttraumatic stress was assessed with the impact of event scale - revised ( ies - r ; weiss & marmar , 1997 ) which is employed in order to assess current subjective distress for any specific life event . also , the ies - r is a widely used measure of posttraumatic stress with satisfactory psychometric properties ( joseph , 2000 ; sundin & horowitz , 2003 ) . it was administered prior to the interview , in order to avoid event recall potentially influencing responses about current state , and was provided in nationally validated versions ( baguena et al . , 2001 ; juczyski & ogiska - bulik , 2009 ; maercker & schtzwohl , 1998 ; preiss et al . , 2004 ; sveen et al . , 2010 ) . missing cases on the ies - r ( four single items ) were calculated using a regression model . in order to detect effects of individual and event characteristics on post- and peritraumatic outcome variables , separate multiple regressions with simultaneous inclusion of predictors were run with ies - r total scores , peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception as outcome variables . where reference categories were required , the group with the largest membership was used as the reference ( i.e. , education2 , fire ) . before including predictors , correlations between variables were calculated . as none of the variables were highly correlated , all could be included as predictors . due to the incidence rates of certain disasters varying in different geographical regions , as fires were common across all besecu countries , preliminary analyses of variance were conducted for the ies - r , emotional stress and risk outcomes of fire survivors with culture as the independent variable . similarly , a series of t - tests were conducted on the outcomes of polish vs. spanish survivors of collapses of buildings . no significant differences were found on these assessments ( all ps>0.17 ) , therefore culture was omitted as a variable from any further analysis . while the main purpose of the paper was to explore the relationships between the individual and event characteristics and each of the peri- and posttraumatic outcomes , it was nevertheless of interest to also examine the relationship between the three outcomes . thus , in addition to the regressions , correlations and a mancova were conducted and followed up with discriminant analysis and canonical correlation analysis . of interest were emergency events that met the following criteria : ( 1 ) occurred within approximately 10 years prior to the research interview , concentrated in a particular time and space ; ( 2 ) concerned an identifiable hazard that posed a physical threat but of a non - infectious kind ( i.e. , excluding emergency events such as epidemics ) ; ( 3 ) the threat was posed to many lives and/or property ; ( 4 ) the emergency services attended the scene ; and ( 5 ) a full or partial evacuation of the affected structure(s ) was attempted , either by the victims or by official agents . a variety of events occurring in the participating centres countries met the above criteria : i.e. , czech republic floods in 2002 ; collapse of buildings such as the katowice trade hall roof collapse in poland , 2006 and the collapse of a multi - storey residential building in spain , 2006 ; severe fires in multi - storey residential or public buildings across europe such as the gothenburg discotheque fire in sweden , 1998 or a fire in a hamburg hospital in germany , 2007 ; and the 7/7 london bombings in the uk , 2005 . most injuries ( around half of the participants ) had incurred during terror attacks and collapses of buildings . in fires , about 25% and in floods about 10% of participants were injured . fatalities during the incidents in the direct surrounding of participants were reported in all cases of terrorist attack and collapse of a building and in nearly half of all fire events . floods were reported as having caused no fatalities in the surrounding of the interviewed victims . recruitment was performed in each centre separately , using a combination of word - of - mouth campaigns and advertising campaigns conducted via the media , self - help groups and the emergency services . adult survivors were invited to contact the researchers if they wished to take part in an interview . participation was restricted to persons who had directly experienced the emergency event  bystanders and relatives of victims were excluded . also excluded were persons who had survived incidents which turned out not to match all of the aforementioned event criteria . finally , four participants were excluded due to the fact that the respective disasters did not happen in any of the countries of the participating centres . there was an almost even split of females ( 51.4% ) and males ( 48.6% ) . concerning education , 25.3% of all participants had a university degree , 21.8% were educated to only primary level and 43.7% to secondary education level . eleven percent of participants had a migrant background but no significant differences were found between migrants and natives regarding gender , age , education , or event type . when participants agreed to take part in the study , a comprehensive interview was conducted about emotional , behavioural , and cognitive responses during the disaster ( results of the content of survivors narratives can be found in grimm , hulse , preiss , & schmidt , in press ) . furthermore , a set of psychological instruments were applied and socio - demographic and incident - related characteristics were assessed . the interview procedure borrowed techniques from the cognitive interview ( fisher & geiselman , 1992 ) to help participants mentally recreate the past event ; the entire interview lasted on average 90 min . after revisiting the event in the interview , participants were asked to retrospectively rate their emotional stress and risk perception at the stage when they realized that they were actually experiencing a disaster . they did this on a 4-point scale with zero indicating no stress/ risk and four indicating high stress/ risk . asking participants to retrospectively rate their emotions and cognitions a few years after they experienced them is not ideal as their current state and beliefs could bias their recollections of past states ( robinson & clore , 2002 ) . nevertheless , there is research which indicates that memory for emotion - related experiences is more resistant to decaying over time ( e.g. , burke , heuer , & reisberg , 1992 ; ritchey , dolcos , & cabeza , 2008 ) . furthermore , there is some experimental evidence that retrospective ratings , at least of emotion , might provide reasonable approximations of momentary ratings ( barrett , 1997 ) . in addition , it was expected that the interview and its context reinstatement memory aids would make the relevant past states more accessible . thus , while bearing the potential for recall - related biases in mind , the emotional stress and risk ratings were included to explore peritraumatic states . current posttraumatic stress was assessed with the impact of event scale - revised ( ies - r ; weiss & marmar , 1997 ) which is employed in order to assess current subjective distress for any specific life event . also , the ies - r is a widely used measure of posttraumatic stress with satisfactory psychometric properties ( joseph , 2000 ; sundin & horowitz , 2003 ) . it was administered prior to the interview , in order to avoid event recall potentially influencing responses about current state , and was provided in nationally validated versions ( baguena et al . , 2001 ; juczyski & ogiska - bulik , 2009 ; maercker & schtzwohl , 1998 ; preiss et al . , 2004 ; sveen et al . , 2010 ) . missing cases on the ies - r ( four single items ) were calculated using a regression model . in order to detect effects of individual and event characteristics on post- and peritraumatic outcome variables , separate multiple regressions with simultaneous inclusion of predictors were run with ies - r total scores , peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception as outcome variables . where reference categories were required , the group with the largest membership was used as the reference ( i.e. , education2 , fire ) . before including predictors , correlations between variables were calculated . as none of the variables were highly correlated , all could be included as predictors . due to the incidence rates of certain disasters varying in different geographical regions , as fires were common across all besecu countries , preliminary analyses of variance were conducted for the ies - r , emotional stress and risk outcomes of fire survivors with culture as the independent variable . similarly , a series of t - tests were conducted on the outcomes of polish vs. spanish survivors of collapses of buildings . no significant differences were found on these assessments ( all ps>0.17 ) , therefore culture was omitted as a variable from any further analysis . while the main purpose of the paper was to explore the relationships between the individual and event characteristics and each of the peri- and posttraumatic outcomes , it was nevertheless of interest to also examine the relationship between the three outcomes . thus , in addition to the regressions , correlations and a mancova were conducted and followed up with discriminant analysis and canonical correlation analysis . mean total ies - r scores plus mean scores of peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception are shown across different types of disasters in table 1 . mean ies - r total , peritraumatic emotional stress , and peritraumatic risk perception scores ( and sds ) , all across different types of disasters the individual characteristics gender , age , education and the event characteristics time since event , injuries , fatalities , plus type of event were entered into the regression models simultaneously . the results for the outcome variables posttraumatic stress , peritraumatic emotional stress and peritraumatic risk perception are shown in tables 2 , 3 and 4 respectively . the predictors explained most variance in the assessment of posttraumatic stress ( r 
 = 0.59 [ adjusted r 
 = 0.54 ] ) , then in the assessment of peritraumatic emotional stress ( r 
 = 0.56 [ adjusted r 
 = 0.48 ] ) , followed by the assessment of peritraumatic risk perception ( r 
 = 0.42 [ adjusted r 
 = 0.32 ] ) . while type of event was always a significant predictor , the variables gender and education only predicted two measures each ( ies - r scores / emotional stress and emotional stress / risk perception respectively ) , and injuries , time since event and fatalities were only significant predictors of single measures ( the first ies - r scores , the latter two emotional stress ) . regression results showing individual and event characteristic predictors of ies - r total scores gender m(sd ) : female 35.90(23.11 ) ; male 28.00(20.34 ) . all outcome variables were significantly intercorrelated ; ies - r scores were correlated more highly with peritraumatic emotional stress ( r=0.49 , p=0.000 ) than with risk perception ( r=0.28 , p=0.01 ) . the highest correlation was between the two peritraumatic variables ( r=0.69 , p=0.000 ) . given these findings , a mancova was run and confirmed that , even when the relationships between ies - r scores , peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception were taken into account , type of event still had a significant effect on all three outcome variables , pillai 's trace=0.59 , f(9 , 108)=2.91 , p=0.004 . the mancova was followed up with a discriminant analysis , using type of event as the grouping variable and the post- and peritraumatic outcome variables as independents . the first function explained 51% of the variance ( canonical r 
 = 0.36 ) , the second explained 46% ( canonical r 
 = 0.34 ) , and the third only 3% ( canonical r 
 = 0.03 ) . in combination , these three discriminant functions significantly differentiated event types , wilk 's lambda=0.42 , x 
 ( 9)=55.03 , p=0.000 . when the first function was removed , the second and third functions together were still able to significantly differentiate event types , wilk 's lambda=0.65 , x 
 ( 4)=27.40 , p=0.000 . however , the third function on its own was not able to significantly differentiate the groups , wilk 's lambda=0.97 , x 
 ( 1)=1.80 , p=0.18 . the correlations between the outcomes and the discriminant functions revealed the following : ies - r scores loaded extremely highly on the first function ( r=0.95 ) but far less on the second and third functions ( r=0.11 and r=0.28 , respectively ) ; emotional stress loaded very highly on the second function ( r=0.85 ) but more moderately on the first and third functions ( r=0.41 and r=0.33 , respectively ) ; and risk perception loaded very highly on the second function ( r=0.88 ) , moderately on the third function ( r=0.48 ) and almost negligibly on the first function ( r=0.06 ) . the group centroids demonstrated that the first function discriminated the event flood from the events fire , terror attack and collapse of a building , the second function discriminated the event terror attack from the events fire , flood and collapse of a building , while the third function discriminated the events fire and terror attack from the events flood and collapse of a building . regression results showing individual and event characteristic predictors of peritraumatic emotional stress gender m(sd ) : female 2.77(1.00 ) ; male 2.16(0.91 ) . education m(sd ) : primary 2.79(1.12 ) ; secondary 2.28(0.93 ) ; tertiary 2.69(1.03 ) ; further 2.00(0.82 ) . mean total ies - r scores plus mean scores of peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception are shown across different types of disasters in table 1 . mean ies - r total , peritraumatic emotional stress , and peritraumatic risk perception scores ( and sds ) , all across different types of disasters the individual characteristics gender , age , education and the event characteristics time since event , injuries , fatalities , plus type of event were entered into the regression models simultaneously . the results for the outcome variables posttraumatic stress , peritraumatic emotional stress and peritraumatic risk perception are shown in tables 2 , 3 and 4 respectively . the predictors explained most variance in the assessment of posttraumatic stress ( r 
 = 0.59 [ adjusted r 
 = 0.54 ] ) , then in the assessment of peritraumatic emotional stress ( r 
 = 0.56 [ adjusted r 
 = 0.48 ] ) , followed by the assessment of peritraumatic risk perception ( r 
 = 0.42 [ adjusted r 
 = 0.32 ] ) . while type of event was always a significant predictor , the variables gender and education only predicted two measures each ( ies - r scores / emotional stress and emotional stress / risk perception respectively ) , and injuries , time since event and fatalities were only significant predictors of single measures ( the first ies - r scores , the latter two emotional stress ) . regression results showing individual and event characteristic predictors of ies - r total scores gender m(sd ) : female 35.90(23.11 ) ; male 28.00(20.34 ) . all outcome variables were significantly intercorrelated ; ies - r scores were correlated more highly with peritraumatic emotional stress ( r=0.49 , p=0.000 ) than with risk perception ( r=0.28 , p=0.01 ) . the highest correlation was between the two peritraumatic variables ( r=0.69 , p=0.000 ) . given these findings , a mancova was run and confirmed that , even when the relationships between ies - r scores , peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception were taken into account , type of event still had a significant effect on all three outcome variables , pillai 's trace=0.59 , f(9 , 108)=2.91 , p=0.004 . the mancova was followed up with a discriminant analysis , using type of event as the grouping variable and the post- and peritraumatic outcome variables as independents . the first function explained 51% of the variance ( canonical r 
 = 0.36 ) , the second explained 46% ( canonical r 
 = 0.34 ) , and the third only 3% ( canonical r 
 = 0.03 ) . in combination , these three discriminant functions significantly differentiated event types , wilk 's lambda=0.42 , x 
 ( 9)=55.03 , p=0.000 . when the first function was removed , the second and third functions together were still able to significantly differentiate event types , wilk 's lambda=0.65 , x 
 ( 4)=27.40 , p=0.000 . however , the third function on its own was not able to significantly differentiate the groups , wilk 's lambda=0.97 , x 
 ( 1)=1.80 , p=0.18 . the correlations between the outcomes and the discriminant functions revealed the following : ies - r scores loaded extremely highly on the first function ( r=0.95 ) but far less on the second and third functions ( r=0.11 and r=0.28 , respectively ) ; emotional stress loaded very highly on the second function ( r=0.85 ) but more moderately on the first and third functions ( r=0.41 and r=0.33 , respectively ) ; and risk perception loaded very highly on the second function ( r=0.88 ) , moderately on the third function ( r=0.48 ) and almost negligibly on the first function ( r=0.06 ) . the group centroids demonstrated that the first function discriminated the event flood from the events fire , terror attack and collapse of a building , the second function discriminated the event terror attack from the events fire , flood and collapse of a building , while the third function discriminated the events fire and terror attack from the events flood and collapse of a building . regression results showing individual and event characteristic predictors of peritraumatic emotional stress gender m(sd ) : female 2.77(1.00 ) ; male 2.16(0.91 ) . education m(sd ) : primary 2.79(1.12 ) ; secondary 2.28(0.93 ) ; tertiary 2.69(1.03 ) ; further 2.00(0.82 ) . the current exploratory study is one of the first to compare perceived post- and peritraumatic stress levels of survivors across different types of disasters . terror attacks , although rated by the public as a high - impact disaster for survivors ( grimm , hulse , & schmidt , 2009 ) , was not the disaster evoking the highest posttraumatic stress here . however , unexpectedly high levels of posttraumatic stress were found in this study for collapses of a shopping centre in katowice and a residential building in barcelona , and also for fires in residential and public buildings across a number of locations . considering peritraumatic responses , participants who experienced terror attacks reported the highest levels of emotional stress and risk perception . at a first glance , the man - made / technological disasters in this sample had a greater post - event influence than did the ( single ) natural disaster , which is consistent with galea et al . 's ( 2005 ) meta - analysis findings . however , as argued in the introduction , we believe that researchers should take a closer look at event type , beyond this general classification , and that the characteristics of events may better explain these findings . the natural disaster flood was the only event with a long onset ; victims were warned about the upcoming threat and able to take safety measures which might have resulted in them scoring the lowest in post- and peritraumatic stress . furthermore , significant differences were found between different types of man - made / technological disasters , which suggest that they might not necessarily have equivalent effects . with regards to the environmental cues of the disaster , we know from the interviews conducted in this study that survivors of disasters with sudden violent cues , such as explosions , reported significantly higher posttraumatic stress ( grimm et al . as such cues characterized the terror attacks and collapses of buildings , it might also explain their survivors high ratings on the peritraumatic variables . when taking a look at the influence of predictor variables on post- and peritraumatic stress , the type of event significantly explained variance in all three measures . the moderating effect of time on ptsd is well established ( sundin & horowitz , 2003 ) , therefore our finding that only the rating of peritraumatic emotional stress altered with time passing was unexpected . however , the fact that the score of the peritraumatic measure lowered with time is important to note and suggests that the events were even more stressful originally than was reported here . the influence of the individual characteristic female gender was related to higher peritraumatic and posttraumatic stress but not to higher risk perception . regarding the influence of gender on ptsd , current research studies have not come to a definite conclusion . in sundin & horowitz ( 2003 ) meta - analysis about the use of the ies - r , gender was , in comparison to the type of traumatic event , relatively insignificant . however , it needs to be considered that this meta - analysis included all types of traumatic events , not just disasters . brewin , andrews , and valentine ( 2000 ) found in their meta - analysis that female gender is a modest risk factor for ptsd . when the type of traumatic event was taken into account , studies of disasters showed the lowest impact of gender in comparison to studies of other non - combat / war events . regarding the present study 's results for other socio - demographic factors , age had no significant influence either on post- or on peritraumatic stress , while education had a little influence on both peritraumatic variables . meta - analysis results have revealed that age and education effects on posttraumatic stress can be smaller or less consistent in certain groups ( brewin et al . , 2000 ) and this may in part account for the results here . regression results showing individual and event characteristic predictors of peritraumatic risk perception reference category : education2 . education m(sd ) : primary 2.64(0.78 ) ; secondary 2.25(1.11 ) ; tertiary 2.22(1.26 ) ; further 1.75(0.96 ) . although koren , hemel , and klein ( 2006 ) suggest in their review article that peritraumatic factors such as perceived threat to one 's life during the trauma are increased by bodily injuries incurred during the traumatic event , being injured did not have a significant effect on the peritraumatic variables here . however , a significant relationship was established between posttraumatic stress and being injured during a disaster . 2006 ) have concluded that ptsd symptoms increase if survivors are injured during a traumatic event , but that the relationship between ptsd and injuries is a complex one , which can be further explained by the factors pain , disfiguration , social isolation , hospitalization and medical procedures ; factors that were not considered in this study . other event characteristics , such as fatalities , were related to higher peritraumatic emotional stress but not to posttraumatic stress in the current study . in an investigation of bloody sunday , shevlin and mcguigan ( 2003 ) found highest ies - r mean scores in the immediate family of victims who lost their lives . in our sample there were no reports of losing family members , however there were reports of other fatalities occurring during the event . ( 2009 ) found that both types of death exposure , the loss of relatives and seeing many dead bodies , contributed to posttraumatic distress after the tsunami in 2004 . however , it is likely that the magnitude of exposure to dead bodies was lower in our studied disasters than in the tsunami of 2004 . previous research has found negative peritraumatic emotional and cognitive states ( e.g. , fear , thinking one 's life is in danger , loss of control , dissociation ) to be good predictors of posttraumatic stress ( basoglu et al . , 2002 ; basoglu et al . , 2004 ; hollifield et al . , 2008 ; ozer , best , lipsey , & weiss 2003 ; simeon et al . , 2003 ) . thus , we are left with the question of why in this study events that , according to self - reports , evoked the highest stress and perceived risk at the time did not lead onto the highest level of later stress . the correlations revealed that the outcome variables were positively related to one another but to differing extents . while the peritraumatic measures were quite closely related  perhaps understandably , given they share a moment in time  and current posttraumatic stress and peritraumatic emotional stress were moderately related , peritraumatic risk perception was not so strongly related to current posttraumatic stress . these results suggest that some aspect(s ) of the emotional states experienced during the event may carry over and/or be shared with a survivor 's later current state but that the perceived risk at the time of the event may not inevitably induce a stressful state for some time to come afterwards . it could be argued that a realistic appraisal of risk during the situation , irrespective of whether the risk was perceived as high or low , might help in dealing with the circumstances afterwards . alternatively , the effect of perceived risk might be moderated by the survivors coping strategies ( or lack of ) . the discriminant analysis looked into the relationships between the outcome variables further , in the context of their ability to discriminate type of event . the ies - r loaded the most on the first function while emotional stress loaded more moderately and risk perception barely at all . in contrast , the two peritraumatic measures loaded highly on the second function ( which accounted for slightly less variance ) and the ies - r made little contribution here . risk perception was the measure that loaded most on the third function but this function was not good , at least not on its own . of note , each function differentiated event types differently . these findings then provide further evidence that , despite being related , the three outcome measures are not simply interchangeable . it appears that when assessing the effects of different types of event on disaster survivors measuring peritraumatic states can be useful as can measuring posttraumatic states , but a better assessment is achieved when the relative contribution of each state is combined . it has to be remembered that the ies - r , although a good indicator of posttraumatic stress , was not used to diagnose ptsd and several predictors relevant for the psychological outcome of survivors , such as pre - event psychological morbidity and peritraumatic detachment , were therefore not included . thus , how our findings fit within what is already known about predictors of actual ptsd requires further research . as commonly reported in disaster research , recruitment strategy and inclusion criteria led to a purposive sample ( stallings , 2007 ) . this means that the different sample sizes per disaster were affected somewhat by the different incidence rates of each disaster type across europe , which also led to the fact that the variables type of event and culture were somewhat confounded . one of the strengths of the study , to only include survivors of real life - threatening events , has as a consequence reduced the overall sample size even further and contributed to the uneven sample sizes across events . both issues have meant a reduction in the power of the study and might prohibit a generalization of the presented findings . this was not entirely explained by symptoms of ptsd or exposure to terror attacks , instead indicating cultural differences . although we did not find any influence of culture on perceived post- and peritraumatic stress levels , tendencies for cross - cultural differences in talking about the traumatic event in this sample have been reported elsewhere ( freitag et al . , 2010 ) , and thus evidence would suggest that culture should remain a consideration in this field of research . for future studies with larger , more heterogeneous samples it might be worth operationalizing the variable culture not as country of residence but as a function of other cultural aspects such as race ( norris , perilla , ibanez , & murphy , 2001 ) ; many countries in western europe are common in this respect and this might also explain our non - significant findings for culture . in conclusion , an explorative approach was taken to study post- and peritraumatic reactions to different types of disasters , including a test of the influence of a selection of individual and event characteristics . the results suggest that the type of event people experience with its specific situational factors has an influence on post- and peritraumatic reactions . therefore two future research paths are suggested : the first would be to replicate and extend this study with a larger sample , still using a methodology that allows for direct comparisons across different types of disasters . such a study would benefit from including more individual and event characteristics ( e.g. , being trapped during the event , social affiliation , etc . ) and examining their relative effects on post- and peritraumatic outcomes but also their relative prevalence in each type of event . secondly , as our results showed , people 's emotions and cognitions during the event may be influenced by disaster characteristics , just as their emotions and cognitions may be affected afterwards . therefore we believe that it is worth having a closer look at event characteristics and how these interact with individuals peritraumatic responses . we know from interviews with survivors of disasters that survivors with lower current posttraumatic stress were more often able to actively manage their escape by preparing for evacuation or contacting emergency services in order to plan their rescue or seek information about how to behave ( grimm et al . social affiliation and the place people are in at the moment of the disaster could be relevant factors in the influence of the type of event . prati , catufi , and pietrantoni ( 2012 ) showed that persons who were in the company of their families were less likely to flee the endangered place as being in their homes during the disaster was also related to a higher feeling of safety . therefore we believe that an inclusion of peritraumatic behavioural responses during disasters will further understanding of post- and peritraumatic stress . there is no conflict of interest in the present study for any of the authors .