Why Care?

• Growing up under adverse circumstances is known to be associated with detrimental effects on children’s cognitive functioning, social functioning, mental health, and physical health.

• It takes far fewer resources to promote resilience in a population than it does to repair the damage created by psychopathology and other negative developmental outcomes.

• Increased research and deeper understanding will allow intervention and prevention programs to target at-risk individuals more precisely.

Thesis Study

This study sought to:

• Identified whether varying patterns, or profiles, of adjustment were present 

• Determined whether any of these profiles showed resilience

• Protective factors present were evaluated to determine whether the presence, or absence, of specific protective factors predicts specific patterns of adjustment

Domains of functioning selected included internalizing problems, externalizing problems, somatic complaints and academic achievement. These have been shown in the developmental literature to have been affected by early adversity.

Protective factors included social support, goal-directedness, neighborhood cohesion, and emotion regulation. These have been identified through previous research as having a positive effect on children and adolescents experiencing adversity. 

Summary

The present study addressed an important gap in past resilience literature, by identifying varying patterns of adolescent functioning across four domains.

It is clear that adolescents may demonstrate positive functioning in certain areas, while struggling in others.

There are additional domains of functioning as well as a vast number of additional protective factors which could be examined through future research.

Predictive Nature of Protective Factors

Anger regulation coping and goal-directedness both significantly predicted Highest Functioning group membership over High Externalizing group membership.

• The ability to regulate one’s emotions when coping with feelings of anger may lead to fewer instances of externalizing behavior problems as a means to cope with these feelings.

• Adolescents who are future-oriented and have goals may be aware of the negative consequences of behaviors such as drug use and aggression and therefore might avoid these behaviors so as not to interfere with their goal achievement.

Neighborhood Cohesion was a significant protective factor with increased perception of cohesion leading to higher likelihood of Highest Functioning membership as opposed to High Internalizing group membership.

Social support and sadness regulation coping were not significant predictors of cluster membership.

• All four groups endorsed high levels of social support from their mothers, as well as somewhat high sadness emotion regulation coping strategies.

  • It is likely that the lack of variability between groups for each of these protective factors lead to an inability to detect their potential to act as differentiating protective factors.