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Part I:
Status of Research
The Issue of Protection
Protective buffers...seem to be helpful to us [as] members of the human race....[They] appear to make a more profound impact on the life course of individuals who grow up and overcome adversity than do specific risk factors.
-Dr. Emmy Werner (1996b)
While situations that put us at risk for impaired functioning may be limitless, research has been "remarkably consistent in pointing to qualities of child and environment that are associated with competence or better psychosocial functioning during or following adverse experiences" (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998, p. 212). As do many writers, Masten and Coatsworth categorize protective factors according to their occurrence in the individual, the family, or the society or culture as follows:
Individual:
- Good intellectual functioning
- Appealing, sociable, easygoing disposition
- Self-efficacy, self-confidence, high self-esteem
- Talents
- Faith
Family:
- Close relationship to caring parent figure
- Authoritative parenting: warmth, structure, high expectations
- Socioeconomic advantages
- Connections to extended supportive family networks
Extra-familial context:
- Bonds to prosocial adults outside the family
- Connections to prosocial organizations
- Attending effective schools
In their review of 10 years of research on adolescent substance abuse, Weinberg et al. (1998) note that "while there is no single 'resilience' trait," the following factors do appear to act
protectively: intelligence, problem-solving ability, social facility, positive self-esteem, supportive family relationships, positive role models, and affect regulation (p. 256).
From her work with the International Resilience Research Project, Grotberg (1995; 1998) conceptualize protective factors somewhat differently. She states that, to overcome adversities, people draw on the fifteen sources of resilience in Table 1
Table 1. Fifteen Elements of Resilience
I HAVE
- People around me I trust and who love me, no matter what.
- People who set limits for me so Iknow when to stop before there is danger or trouble.
- People who show me how to do things right by the way they do things.
- People who want me to learn to do things on my own.
- People who help me when I am sick, in danger, or need to learn.
I AM
- A person people can like and love.
- Glad to do nice things for others and show my concern.
- Respectful of myself and others.
- Willing to be responsible for what I do.
- Sure things will be all right.
I CAN
- Talk to others about things that frighten me or bothr me.
- Find ways to solve problems that I face.
- Control myself when I feel like doing something not right or dangerous.
- Figure out when it is a good time to talk to someone or take action.
- Find someone to help me when I need it.
Source: Grotberg, E.H. (1995). A guide to promoting resilience in children: Strengthening the human spirit. The Hague, Netherlands: The Bernard van Leer Foundation. Grotberg, E.H., (1998). I Am, I Have, I Can: What families worldwide taught us about resilience.
Reaching Today's Youth, Spring, 1998, 36-39.
The Cumulative Effects of Protection
Just as multiple risks and adversities increase one's risk, so multiple protective mechanisms improve one's chances for a positive outcome. Radke-Yarrow and Brown (1993)found that their resilient children generally enjoyed multiple supportive factors (M=4.5, range=0-7) that outnumbered risk factors (M=1.1, range=0-6). "The typical situation for the resilient child," they say, "was one in which positive factors reinforced each other, enhancing the possibilities of sustaining the child's successful functioning....Support factors within and outside the child...act synergistically to maintain adaptive functioning....If one area were to cause difficulty, other areas are there to repair or replace" (p.588).
Masten and her colleagues (1988) stress "the importance of assessing multiple dimensions of adaptation and multiple attributes in the search for understanding resilience" (p.759). They note that the combination of higher IQ, higher SES, and better parenting quality have been found to be positively associated with competence and negatively associated with stress exposure (p.759). Similarly, Garmezy reports that he and Nuechterlein (1972) found multiple protective factors associated with competent African-American children. Their teachers rated them as friendly, well liked by peers, and not lethargic, tense, sullen, or restless. Their self-perceptions were founded on a sense of power, self-regard, and positive assessments of their social attributes. In terms of their cognitive skills, they scored high on intelligent tests, were cautious, not impulsive, and solved problems in a reflective manner. They were active, goal-directed, eager to learn, did more than was required of them, participated in classroom discussions, preferred active educational pursuits, and aspired to high vocational goals (Garmezy, 1991).
In his study of 200 families from inner-city Minneapolis, Garmezy (1987) devoted a great deal of time "to exploring relations among a number of major environmental and individual variables, using multiple indicators of stress exposure, competence and the like, to insure the stability of our constructs" (p. 170). Among his findings were:
- Children with greater assets (higher IQ, higher SES, and positive family attributes of stability and cohesion) appeared to be more competent and, under stress, more socially engaged with their peers and in their classroom.
- Higher SES, IQ, and, for girls, more positive family attributes (e.g., quality of the parent-child relationship, adequacy of family communication, degree of parents' perceptiveness about the child, and overall competence of the parent) appeared to be protective factors against disruptive-aggressive responses to stress.
- The quality of a child's social engagement in school was related not only to IQ and SES but also to social comprehension - a factor that reflects interpersonal understanding, problem-solving ability, and humor comprehension, appreciation,and production. Social comprehension was, in turn, positively related to the engagement in school and negatively related to disruptiveness.
- Potential family-related modifiers of competence and stress were family stability, organization, and cohesion. Children with these more advantageous family characteristics were more intelligent, more competent, and less likely to become disruptive under high levels of stress (Garmezy, 1987, p. 170).
Similar results were found in a longitudinal study of protective processes in high-risk children in the Rochester Longitudinal Study (Seifer et al., 1992). Protective factors were assessed at 4 and 13 years of age in three domains: personality dispositions, social support, and family cohesion. Helpful qualities included individual child characteristics such as self-esteem, social support, and low external or unknown locus of control. Protective family characteristics included self-directed parental values, good parent teaching strategies, and low rates of parental criticism and maternal depressed mood. Contextual characteristics included good social support and few negative life events. The researchers summarized their findings by saying, "Many factors hypothesized to be protective did show a relation with positive change in cognitive and/or social-emotional risk. There is strong evidence that many individual and family factors mediate the impact of risk on children between 4 and 13 years of age" (p. 900).
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