Linda Liebenberg

Assessing Resilience Across Cultures Using Mixed Methods: Construction of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure

An international team of investigators in 11 countries have worked collaboratively to develop a culturally and contextually relevant measure of youth resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28). The team used a mixed methods design that facilitated understanding of both common and unique aspects of resilience across cultures. Quantitative and qualitative stages to its development ensure the CYRM-28 has good content-related validity across research sites. Crossover comparison analyses of the findings from the quantitative administration of the pilot measure with 1,451 youth and qualitative interviews with 89 youth support the CYRM-28 as a culturally sensitive measure of youth resilience. The implications of this mixed methods approach to the development of measures for cross-cultural research are discussed.

Validation of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure-28 (CYRM-28) Among Canadian Youth

Objectives: This article presents the validation of the 28-item Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28) among two Canadian samples of youth with complex needs. Method: The CYRM-28 was administered to two groups of concurrent service using youth in Atlantic Canada (n 1 = 497; n2 = 410) allowing for use of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: Reproducibility agreement is achieved and subscales of the measure are confirmed and show adequate psychometric properties. Conclusions: Findings add support to the CYRM-28 as a reliable and valid self-report instrument that measures three components of resilience processes in the lives of complex needs youth. Advanced statistical modeling yielded evidence that the scale, originally developed for use in various countries, can be used to assess resilience in youth from various ethnocultural backgrounds in Atlantic Canada.

The Study of Youth Resilience Across Cultures: Lessons from a Pilot Study of Measurement Development

Resilience researchers from diverse disciplines and cultural settings face formidable challenges in conceptualizing and developing standardized metrics of resilience that are representative of adolescent and young adult experiences across cultures. We discuss these issues using the case example of a pilot study involving researchers in 14 sites in 11 countries. The goal of the International Resilience Project was to develop a culturally and contextually relevant measure of youth resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM). Cultural sensitivity and an iterative research design introduced to the study a number of problems that future studies of resilience will need to address: ambiguity in the definition of positive outcomes; a lack of predictability of models across cultures; and measurement design challenges.

Patterns of service use, individual and contextual risk factors, and resilience among adolescents using multiple psychosocial services

BACKGROUND Very little research has examined the relationship between resilience, risk, and the service use patterns of adolescents with complex needs who use multiple formal and mandated services such as child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice, and special educational supports. This article reports on a study of 497 adolescents in Atlantic Canada who were known to have used at least 2 of these services in the last 6 months. It was hypothesized that greater service use and satisfaction with services would predict both resilience, and better functional outcomes such as prosocial behavior, school engagement and participation in community. METHODS Youth who were known to be multiple service users and who were between the ages of 13 and 21 participated in the study. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire administered individually. Path analysis was used to determine the relationship between risk, service use, resilience, and functional outcomes. MANOVA was then used to determine patterns of service use and service use satisfaction among participants. RESULTS Findings show that there was no significant relationship between service use history and resilience or any of the three functional outcomes. Service use satisfaction, a measure of an adolescents perception of the quality of the services received, did however show a strong positive relationship with resilience. Resilience mediates the impact of risk factors on outcomes and is affected positively by the quality, but not the quantity, of the psychosocial services provided to adolescents with complex needs. CONCLUSIONS Results show that resilience is related to service satisfaction but not the quantity of services used by youth. Coordinated services may not increase resilience or be more effective unless the quality of individual services is experienced by an adolescent receiving intervention as personally empowering and sensitive to his or her needs.

A “Day in the Lives” of Four Resilient Youths Cultural Roots of Resilience

Grounded in the examples of four impoverished, relocated youths (two Sesotho-speaking orphans in South Africa and two Mexican immigrants in Canada), we explore cultural factors as potential roots of resilience. We triangulate rich qualitative findings (visual, dialogical, and observational) to foreground the particular, as well as acknowledge the universal, in explicating resilience in transitional contexts. Resilience-promoting cultural practices rely on adults to function as custodians of protective practices and values and on youth actively to accept their roles as cultural cocustodians. Our findings urge service providers toward forefronting the specific cultural context of young people in their therapeutic interventions and toward purposefully championing resilience-promoting cultural values and practices.

When schooling experiences are respectful of children’s rights: A pathway to resilience

This article reports findings from the Pathways to Resilience study, South Africa. Rooted in a social ecological understanding of resilience, this mixed-methods study investigated resilience processes of black South African youths from poverty-stricken, rural contexts. School-attending youths (n  =  951) completed the Pathways to Resilience Youth Measure (PRYM), which included one resilience measure and two school experience measures. Independent sample t-tests showed that youth reporting agency-supportive school environments (n  =  137) had significantly higher resilience scores than youth with opposite experiences (n  =  330; t(465)  =  −15.379, p  =  0.000). Likewise, youths reporting school staff respect (n  =  171) recorded significantly higher resilience scores than youth who experienced disrespect (n  =  277; t(446)  =  −14.518, p  =  0.000). Subsequently, 130 resilient youths participated in focus groups and/or visual participatory activities to further explore their pathways to resilience. An inductive content analysis of these data illustrated that teacher-facilitated youth agency, aspirations for higher education and employment, and coping with neglect and cruelty, supported resilience processes. Overall, findings suggest that when schooling experiences are supportive of child rights, resilience processes are promoted. This conclusion urges school psychologists and school communities toward transactional practices that support positive youth development in child rights-centred ways.

The role of positive youth development practices in building resilience and enhancing wellbeing for at-risk youth.

Services that utilise positive youth development practices (PYD) are thought to improve the quality of the service experience leading to better outcomes for at-risk youth. This article reports on a study of 605 adolescents (aged 12-17 years) who were concurrent clients of two or more service systems (child welfare, juvenile justice, additional education, mental health). It was hypothesised that services adopting PYD approaches would be related to increases in youth resilience and better wellbeing outcomes. It was also hypothesised that risks, resilience, service experiences and wellbeing outcomes would differ by age, gender and ethnicity. Youth completed a self-report questionnaire administered individually. Path analysis was used to determine the relationship between risk, service use, resilience and a wellbeing outcome measure. MANOVA was then used to determine patterns of risk, service use, resilience and wellbeing among participants based on their demographic characteristics. Services using PYD approaches were significantly related to higher levels of youth resilience. Similarly, increased resilience was related to increased indicators of wellbeing, suggesting the mediating role of resilience between risk factors and wellbeing outcomes. When professionals adopt PYD practices and work with the positive resources around youth (their own resilience processes) interventions can make a significant contribution to wellbeing outcomes for at-risk youth.

Caregivers, Young People with Complex Needs, and Multiple Service Providers: A Study of Triangulated Relationships

Five patterns of service provider-caregiver-adolescent interaction are discussed using qualitative interviews and file review data from 44 youth with complex needs who were clients of more than one psychosocial service (child welfare, mental health, addictions, juvenile justice, and special education). Findings show that young people and their families become triangulated with service providers, either engaging with, or resisting, interventions. For young people with complex needs involved with multiple service providers, both positive and negative patterns of interaction contribute to the complexity of caregiver-child interactions. According to young people themselves, the most functional of these patterns, empowerment, was experienced as protective when it helped them to meet their personal needs and enhance communication. In contrast, four problematic patterns produced triangulations described as conflictual or unsupportive. The implications of these patterns for family therapy are discussed with an emphasis on the therapist as both clinician and advocate for better services from multiple providers.

Analysing image-based data using grounded theory: the Negotiating Resilience Project

The use of image-based methods in social science research is gaining increasing prominence, with much being written about the implementation of these methods in the field. To date however, little has been published regarding the integration of analysis frameworks and images. Increasingly, images are being used in research with marginalised and historically silenced communities as a means of accessing experiences and processes previously unarticulated, exploring the taken-for-granted, and facilitating participant voice in research. Where data sets centre around both narrative and visual data, and where the subjective construction of experience becomes the focus of analysis, grounded theory analytic techniques that emphasise reciprocity with participants can help to generate explanations for patterns of behaviour. In this article we present an exemplar of image-based data analysis using grounded theory. We discuss the process adopted by the Negotiating Resilience Project (NRP) in five countries, of using a social constructionist approach to grounded theory in the analysis of both visual (i.e. video and photographic) and the resulting narrative data.

Ethnocultural Factors, Resilience, and School Engagement.

In this article we examine how cultural and community factors interact with individual level factors to predict school participation. Participants were 497 Atlantic Canadian youth purposefully selected because of their concurrent use of more than one government service or community program at the time they were interviewed. Results revealed that contextual factors associated with resilience (e.g. cultural adherence and involvement in one’s community) affect school engagement more than individual or relational factors among this population. Furthermore, these contextual resilience factors showed a pattern of differential impact, with the greatest influence occurring in the lives of visible minority youth. Findings suggest that improvements in school engagement are likely to result from school-based efforts to enhance children’s experience of their culture and involvement in community activities. Sampling youth outside regular classroom settings and including meso- and exo-systemic factors in studies of school engagement may help to identify protective processes not previously discussed in the literature.