INTRODUCTION: Considering the significant contribution of public education to the reduction of damages incurred by disasters and crises in the country, the identification of all the components and dimensions of public education can be of great help to policymakers in this field in order to adopt a correct policy and decision. The current research aimed to investigate public education in natural disasters with the meta-synthesis method based on the seven-step model of Sandelowski and Barroso (2007).
METHODS: The current qualitative research was conducted based on a meta-synthesis approach. The statistical population of the research included articles related to the research keywords from 2000 until now. A number of 175 articles were retrieved, and after examining the title of the research, 105 articles were removed, and 70 papers were reviewed, out of which 36 papers were removed, and 34 articles entered the final stage for full analysis. Articles were searched in databases, such as Scopus, Emerald, Science Direct, Springer, Google Scholar, and Scientific Information Database (SID). The selected sources were analyzed using Maxqda-2020 software, and the research findings were coded
FINDINGS: According to the findings, in the open coding stage, 100 primary codes were extracted from 34 articles, and after extracting the primary codes, to categorize the concepts, axial coding was used, yielding 5 dimensions, 12 components, and their sub-components.
CONCLUSION: As evidenced by the obtained results, to reduce vulnerability, the responsible institutions can adopt appropriate measures that lead to learning and changes in the audience's behavior by using the presented model and considering the determined components and indicators in the process of public education. This model includes the stages of analysis, educational design, preparation and development, implementation, and evaluation.
