The Resilience Research Centre brings together leaders in the field of resilience research from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds. Our partners from more than a dozen countries employ methodologically diverse approaches to the study of how children, youth and families cope with many different kinds of adversity. Represented are experts from the fields of social work, sociology, psychiatry, health statistics and measurement, psychology, medical anthropology, education, medicine, and epidemiology. Together, under the direction of Dr Michael Ungar at Dalhousie University, we are trying to understand both similarities and differences across cultures and contexts in how resilience is understood and interventions made most effective.
The Resilience Research Centre Team, June 2005, Halifax, Nova Scotia
To explore resilience as both a process and outcome across many different cultures and contexts, the Resilience Research Centre coordinates a number of different research projects: The International Resilience Project (IRP) seeks to broaden our understanding of how resilience is conceptualized across cultures and contexts. The IRP is currently validating a culturally sensitive measure of youth resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) and gathering life stories from individuals around the world who survive and thrive in contextually and culturally specific ways. Negotiating Resilience is a qualitative explo ration of how youth from five different countries cope with daily challenges. The study uses video technology to capture a day in the life of each participating young person. The use of visual methods and engaging youth themselves in analysis of the data, is designed to understand resilience in different social and physical ecologies. Pathways to Resilience seeks to better understand how youth navigate between mandated services (child welfare, education, mental health, and youth justice) to successful outcomes. And, Stories of Transition explores factors informing career decisions among Canadian young people aged 23-30. Under the leadership of Michael Ungar, projects are managed by Cathy Campbell, Nora Didkowsky and Linda Liebenberg.
What is Resilience?
Most commonly, the term resilience has come to mean an individual's ability to overcome adversity and continue his or her normal development. A more comprehensive and progressive definition of resilience has emerged from our work internationally. Dr. Michael Ungar, Principal Investigator with the Resilience Research Centre, has suggested that resilience is better understood as follows:
"Resilience is both an individual’s capacity to navigate to health resources and a condition of the individual’s family, community and culture to provide those resources in culturally meaningful ways."
This definition shifts our understanding of resilience from an individual concept, popular with western-trained researchers and human services providers, to a more relational understanding of well-being. Understood this way, resilience requires that individuals and communities be supported in the development of their capacity to find resources that bolster well-being, while also emphasizing that it’s up to families, communities and governments to provide these resources in ways individuals value. In this sense, resilience is the result of both successful navigation to resources and negotiation for resources to be provided in meaningful ways. You can read more about resilience from this perspective in publications by the Centre’s members.
A Multidimensional Model of Resilience
There are many factors associated with resilience. Some of the more common aspects of successful navigation and negotiation for well-being under stress include the following:
A. Individual factors:
Assertiveness; the ability to solve problems; Self-efficacy; Being able to live with uncertainty; Self-awareness; Perceived social support; A positive outlook; Empathy for others; Having goals and aspirations; Showing a balance between independence and dependence on others; Appropriate use of or abstinence from substances like alcohol and drugs; A sense of humour; A sense of duty (to others or self, depending on the culture).
B. Relationships factors:
Parenting that meets the child's needs; Appropriate emotional expression and parental monitoring within the family; Social competence; The presence of a positive mentor and role models; Meaningful relationships with others at school, home, perceived social support; Peer group acceptance.
C. Community contexts:
Opportunities for age-appropriate work; Avoidance of exposure to violence in one's family, community, and with peers; Government provision for children's safety, recreation, housing, and jobs when older; Meaningful rights of passage with an appropriate amount of risk; Tolerance of high-risk and problem behavior; Safety and security; Perceived social equity; Access to school and education, information, learning resources.
D. Cultural factors:
Affiliation with a religious organization; Tolerance for different ideologies and beliefs; Adequate management of cultural dislocation and a change or shift in values; Self-betterment; Having a life philosophy; Cultural and/or spiritual identification; Being culturally grounded by knowing where you come from and being part of a cultural tradition that is expressed through daily activities.
E. Physical Ecology factors:
Access to a healthy environment; Security in one’s community; Access to recreational spaces; Sustainable resources; Ecological diversity (for more on this, see http://www.resalliance.org and our publications).
What is Resilience Research?
Resilience research involving children, youth and families looks at the health-enhancing capacities, individual, family and community resources, and developmental pathways of vulnerable children and youth, who against all odds, manage not only to survive unhealthy environments, but thrive. The Resilience Research Centre supports both quantitative and qualitative research, with an emphasis on mixed methods designs that favor understanding resilience as a culturally and contextually embedded construct.
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