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Conference Information


Thank you to everyone who joined us in Halifax! Presentations that have been submitted are available for download.

Affiliated Research Centres









 

The Resilience Research Centre (RRC) brings together leaders in the field of resilience research from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds. Our partners across six continents (point at any dot on the map to learn more about each one) employ methodologically diverse approaches to the study of how children, youth and families cope with many different kinds of adversity. The RRC’s focus is the study of the social and physical ecologies that make resilience more likely to occur. The research we do is looking beyond individual factors to aspects of a young person’s family, neighborhood, wider community, school, culture and the political and economic forces that exert an influence on children’s development in challenging contexts.

Represented are experts from many fields, including social work, sociology, psychiatry, health statistics and measurement, psychology, medical anthropology, education, medicine, theology, child and youth studies, 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 the ways we can intervene to help children and youth who face significant levels of risk.

The Resilience Research Centre Team, June 2005, Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Resilience Research Centre Team, June 2005, Halifax, Nova Scotia

RRC Projects

What is Resilience?

A Multidimensional Model of Resilience

What is Resilience Research?


RRC Projects

To explore resilience as both a process and outcome, the Resilience Research Centre coordinates a number of different research projects. These include:

  • 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 visual methods qualitative study of how youth from many different countries cope with daily challenges. The study uses visual methods, both video and still photographs, to capture a day in the life of each participating young person. Through the use of visual methods and engaging youth themselves in the analysis of the data, our goal is to identify 'hidden' aspects of resilience that have not been identified in the empirical literature. Many of these dimensions of resilience are culturally embedded and in some cases, have yet to be studied across different social ecologies.

  • Pathways to Resilience seeks to better understand how youth navigate between formal mandated services like child welfare, education, mental health, and youth justice, as well as how youth access informal family and community supports. Our goal is to understand the role services and supports play in helping to build the capacities of young people that are associated with resilience, and how collaboration between services and supports can address the risk factors young people face.

  • Stories of Transition explores factors informing career decisions among young people during the decade after high school. This qualitative study interviewed more than 100 emerging adults in five different parts of Canada, each with a different economic climate that presented both challenges and barriers to career starters.

  • The Youth Advocate Program is a National Crime Prevention Centre funded project operated by the Halifax Regional Municipality whose goal is to prevent 9 - 14 year olds, in six pilot communities, from engaging in gang related activities, anti-social and criminal behaviors while enhancing public safety. The RRC is contracted to conduct the evaluation of this four-year program from 2008 when it began to its completion in 2012.


These projects are managed by Linda Liebenberg, the Centre’s Director of Research. Individual project directors include Nora Didkowsky, Cathy Campbell, and Megan Campbell.

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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. However, the RRC uses a more ecological and culturally sensitive definition. Dr. Michael Ungar, Principal Investigator with the RRC, has suggested that resilience is better understood as follows:

"In the context of exposure to significant adversity, resilience is both the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that sustain their well-being, and their capacity individually and collectively to negotiate for these resources to be provided 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 culturally embedded understanding of well-being. Understood this way, resilience is a social construct that identifies both processes and outcomes associated with what people themselves term well-being. It makes explicit that resilience is more likely to occur when we provide the services, supports and health resources that make it more likely for every child to do well in ways that are meaningful to his or her family and community. 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.

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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:

Individual Factors

  • assertiveness

  • ability to solve problems

  • self-efficacy

  • ability to live with uncertainty

  • self-awareness

  • a positive outlook

  • empathy for others

  • having goals and aspirations

  • ability to maintain 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) 


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, and perceived social support

  • peer group acceptance


Community Factors

  • 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 they are at the appropriate age to work

  • 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, and learning resources


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


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)


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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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Did you know that we now have four research programs running in more than a dozen countries worldwide? Visit our project pages to find out more.

Looking for books from the presenters at our June 2010 conference? The event bookseller still has copies and can ship them to you. Please see their website for details: www.kingsbookstore.ca

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RESEARCH INTERNSHIPS
The RRC is committed to assisting the professional development of students and graduates interested in youth resilience and researching youth. Onsite internships are designed to provide participants with challenging work experience under the guidance and supervision of researchers with extensive knowledge of youth resilience and mixed research methods. Internships normally result in publications (see the various projects and publications on our website for more details).

While we are unable to fund internships, we are happy to provide mentoring to individuals who are able to secure their own funding to join the RRC team at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

If you are interested in applying, please submit a cover letter specifying your area of interest and anticipated goals, as well as the length of the internship you are seeking. A 3-5 page sample of your writing is also requested. Please contact us at:

RESILIENCE RESEARCH CENTRE
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY
6414 COBURG ROAD
HALIFAX NS B3H 2A7
CANADA

Applications can also be emailed to rrc@dal.ca

 

Conference Announcement:

Resilience - Why bother? Share, swap and debate resilience research and practice knowledge

University of Brighton, England, 6-7 April 2011

This exciting conference promises to be a creative mix of different individuals and groups, coming together to examine what resilience research is telling us AND consider ways of working in light of these findings. Just how does resilience help us to foster healthy responses in times of trouble?
The programme will include keynotes from leading international academics, parents, young people and practitioners. Expect workshops, panel debate, posters and networking.

To see the Call for contributions and further details, click here.


 

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Last Updated: Apr 26, 2010