The Displaced New Orleans Residents Survey (DNORS)
The Displaced New Orleans Residents Survey (DNORS) is a study of individuals and households that resided in the City of New Orleans, Louisiana, in August 2005, just before Hurricane Katrina struck (on August 29, 2005). Fieldwork for the study was conducted between mid-2009 and mid-2010. The aim of the study was to collect data for analyzing the location, living arrangements, health, and well being of residents who were displaced by the hurricane.
DNORS drew a sample of pre-Katrina dwellings of the city, identified the pre-storm residents of these dwellings, and tracked and interviewed these people wherever they lived at the time of the survey. In particular, DNORS interviewed pre-Katrina residents of New Orleans who had returned to the city as well as residents who had resettled elsewhere.
The survey interviewed 1,380 pre-Katrina households covering 3,760 residents, with detailed individual interviews conducted with 1,761 selected respondents.
The DNORS study builds on an earlier pilot study, the Displaced New Orleans Residents Pilot Survey (DNORPS), which was fielded in the fall of 2006. Documents describing DNORPS and initial analyses using that data can be found in the Publications section of this website.
We currently offer Public Use Data and Restricted Use Data for the DNORS, and, for historical purposes, the earlier DNORPS.
Data users and others interested in data updates and other announcements should register their email addresses with us.
The DNORS was conducted by the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization in Santa Monica, California, with fieldwork conducted by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center.