DOI: 10.17603/ds2-36xg-pt90
title: Food Retailer Data
title: in Food Access Impact Survey for Harris County and Southeast Texas after Hurricane Harvey in 2017

description: Food retailers are stores that stock staple perishable foods such as vegetables, fruits, dairy, bread, cereal, meat, poultry, or fish on a continuous basis and sell these items to the public. Store types include supercenters, grocery stores, convenience stores, combination stores, dollar stores, butcher shops, bakeries, and other specialty food stores. This mission focused on understanding how critical infrastructure failures impact the function of food retailers and how the change in functioning changes food access. This research focused on five infrastructure systems -- transportation, electric power, communications, water, and the buildings utilized by food retailers to carry out their normal activities. The functioning of food retailers was broken down into three branches or domains that are critical for the operation of a food retailer. Specifically, food retailers need 1) people to help run the operation, 2) property or, more generally, a physical structure or structures, to house and conduct operations; 3) products or food stuffs to sell. This mission includes four social science collections related to the in-person survey of food retailers. These collections include the sample frame (a list of all food retailers within the study area with a chance of being randomly selected for the survey), the primary (raw) data collected from the Harris County and Southeast Texas surveys, and an example of a secondary (curated) dataset that focuses on critical infrastructure failures and changes in food retailer functioning.
description: Food insecurity is a chronic problem in the United States that annually affects over 40 million people under normal conditions. This difficult reality can dramatically worsen after disasters. Such events can disrupt both the supply and demand sides of food systems, restricting food distribution and access precisely when households are in a heightened need for food assistance. Often, retailers and food banks must react quickly to meet local needs under difficult post-disaster circumstances. Residents of Harris County and Southeast Texas experienced this problem after Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast in August 2017. The primary data collected by this project relate specifically to the supply side. The data attempt to identify factors that impacted the ability of suppliers to help ensure access to food, with a focus on fresh food access. Factors included impacts to people, property and products due to hurricane-related damage to infrastructure. Two types of food suppliers were the foci of this research: food aid agencies and food retailers. The research team examined food aid agencies in Southeast Texas with data collection methods that included secondary data analysis, a focus group and an online survey. The second population studied was food retailers with in-person surveys with store managers. Food retailers were randomly sampled in three Texas counties: Jefferson, Orange, and Harris. The data collection methods resulted in 32 food aid agency online survey responses and 210 completed food retail in-person surveys. Data were collected five to eight months after the event, which helped to increase the reliability and validity of the data. The time-sensitive nature of post-disaster data requires research teams to quickly organize their efforts before entering the field. The purpose of this project archive is to share the primary data collected, document methods, and to help future research teams reduce the amount of time needed for project development and reporting. This archive does not contain Personally or Business Identifiable Information.