Resilience and Protective Factors

Risk and Resilience

Risk and resilience have been conceptualized as opposite poles “of individual differences in people's response to stress and adversity” (Rutter, 1987, p. 316), with risk representing the negative pole (e.g., succumbing to adversity) and resilience the positive (e.g., overcoming adversity). Over the past five decades, a large and consistent body of research has shown that children's futures are made considerably dimmer by exposure to multiple, chronically adverse living conditions such as poverty, family dysfunction, [Page 458]parental illness or incompetence, abuse, and poor physical health. Negative outcomes of these conditions include (Doll & Lyon, 1998):

• Increased delinquent activity/criminality
• Lower measured intelligence
• Increased educational and learning problems
• Increased likelihood of physical and mental health problems
• Increased likelihood of teenage parenthood
• Increased likelihood of unemployment
• Decreased likelihood of social competence

However, most of these same studies describe complex transactional relationships by which vulnerable children are protected against adult dysfunction through an interplay among characteristics of:

• The child (e.g., easy temperament, achievement oriented)
• The caregiver (e.g., a desire to protect the child from burdensome family hardships)
• The environment (e.g., a high level of support from extended family, friends, and other adults, including those in schools)

Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that understanding the dynamic ways in which individuals successfully negotiate risk situations holds more promise for understanding resilience than amassing lists of discrete attributes of presumably resilient individuals (Doll & Lyon, 1998).

Resilience research, therefore, is no longer preoccupied with describing static or isolated patterns of risk and resilience. Instead, attention has shifted toward: (a) explaining the specific mechanisms by which constellations of risk propel a child toward poorer adult outcomes, and the ways in which these mechanisms are interrupted by protective factors (Rutter, 1987); and (b) understanding how these mechanisms organize into developmental trajectories that facilitate or hinder adult competence. This understanding is dependent on sources of risk and resilience at different points in children's lives, variables that change the magnitude and direction of their lives, and the points in time when these influential variables are introduced, as well as how they are maintained. Addressing both aspects of negotiating risk (e.g., specifying mechanisms and investigating their influence on developmental trajectories) is essential if social and educational programs are to be successful in helping protect vulnerable children.

Protective Factors

Although the precise mechanisms underlying resilience are just beginning to be understood, several decades of longitudinal research provide at least working knowledge about protective factors that are key to ameliorating conditions of risk. These protective factors may be organized into two groups, those pertaining to characteristics of the individual and those related to the context or environment (Doll & Lyon, 1998).