What I'm mainly wondering about is how you would specify (operationalise) healthy, supportive relationships between adults and youth and healthy peer to peer relationships. How do you detect their presence or their absence?
One of the challenges in the humanitarian sports field, is that they are finding that certain coaches are more effective because they have something extra special...an ability to reach kids emotionally...beyond the ability to teach sport techniques. But when organizations are trying to replicate teaching methods, in order to expand their programs, this is a challenge they meet. I think that is true for teachers too...what makes a good teacher?
What do you think? What would you want to measure in an adult or peer? Half the population is under the age of 18. Tanzania's future is NOW...join the 50% campaign!
Huh? You wrote
Based on the findings of various research endeavours, four key protective factors which serve to support and promote resilience in all youth have been discerned. These are: the presence of healthy, supportive relationships between adults and youth; healthy peer to peer relationships; the ability of youth to develop and utilize internal and external problem-solving strategies, in order to affectively mediate adversity (including developing cognitive skills and understandings in order to better deal with stressful and uncertain situations); and healthy involvement with and commitment to a broader community, which includes the encouragement to contribute to the common good of that community. The existence of these over-arching protective factors are believed to help shield youth from such risk factors as trauma or severe stress experienced in catastrophes, as well as to help them "bounce back" after such experiences.
Applications of factor analysis in psychology Factor analysis is used to identify "factors" that explain a variety of results on different tests. For example, intelligence research found that people who get a high score on a test of verbal ability are also good on other tests that require verbal abilities. Researchers explained this by using factor analysis to isolate one factor, often called crystallized intelligence or verbal intelligence, that represents the degree in which someone is able to solve problems involving verbal skills. Factor analysis in psychology is most often associated with intelligence research. However, it also has been used to find factors in a broad range of domains such as personality, attitudes, beliefs, etc. It is linked to psychometrics, as it can assess the validity of an instrument by finding if the instrument indeed measures the postulated factors.
Factor analysis is used to identify "factors" that explain a variety of results on different tests. For example, intelligence research found that people who get a high score on a test of verbal ability are also good on other tests that require verbal abilities. Researchers explained this by using factor analysis to isolate one factor, often called crystallized intelligence or verbal intelligence, that represents the degree in which someone is able to solve problems involving verbal skills.
Factor analysis in psychology is most often associated with intelligence research. However, it also has been used to find factors in a broad range of domains such as personality, attitudes, beliefs, etc. It is linked to psychometrics, as it can assess the validity of an instrument by finding if the instrument indeed measures the postulated factors.
Anyway...There has been years of research...even beyond this more recent resilience research...on identifying protective factors in healthy child development. Yes, there have been many psychological instruments used, so assume factor analyses were done (though to be honest, I was not thinking of factor analysis when I used the term...though maybe I should). If you are interested, and can give you some good references on resilience research that I think are key.
But...even as long as psychology has been around...there still a dearth of validated psychological tests that have been validated to assess resilience in children, or to test trauma in children, or to test resilience and/or trauma in children in other cultures (which has been surprising for me to learn). It goes on, for example, there is hardly any research at all on the effects of disasters on women. Etc.
Social psychological research about the effects of disasters, about the efects of disasters on people in the developing world (etc) is really quite new. Most research is from the West. And a lot that is assumed, has not been "proved"...but then, as I assume you know, it is quite difficult to say with any assuredness that "X causes Y human behavior". Mostly we can point to significant relationships..."we see that x behavior is related to y behavior"...which goes back to the factor analysis point you made. Half the population is under the age of 18. Tanzania's future is NOW...join the 50% campaign!
So can you or can't you not "operationalise" healthy relationships? Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
But, yes, healthy relationships can be operationalized.
Its just challenging when a researcher is trying to do this "in the field", as opposed to in a more controlled clinic or university setting. There's a lot of variables that can come into play. Half the population is under the age of 18. Tanzania's future is NOW...join the 50% campaign!
What I wondered about was how you avoid bias. Like, when you're faced with a kid who doesn't 'bounce back', do you go looking for elements that might not be healthy, whereas with a kid that does, if you're not confronted with it, you would just assume that all is well? Do you exaggerate elements you might have let pass in a kid that does make it pass. I mean, there are all kinds of shots to call. Like, is all physical correction abuse, or do you define it as neutral when it is not frequent and stays within strict boundaries? When does harmless or even supportive teasing among kids become bullying?
What I'd say is that you do indeed need a set of identified behaviours, both positive and negative, and you need to define them in a way that allows for the greatest consistency in measurement. Then, you start shaving.
What these are, I don't really know. I do policy and law, not psychology ;-) Just wondering out loud how you guys deal with these problems.
How is truly objective data gathered? The researcher often has a hypothesis of what they want to learn - is that somehow being communicated to the subject of their study? And does this person figure out what the questions are about, and respond to this positively or negatively, based on their own bias? Are we getting the real information, or information based on what someone wants or doesn't want? Plus, it has been noted that kids are often more aware of their internal experience, but less aware of their behavior. Whereas adults are ware of a kids behaviors, but less aware of their internal experience. How do you reconcile that?
On top of all that, there are ethical challenges for anyone who wants to learn about how well a kid is doing. What does a researcher do if they find a kid has (or is) being mistreated, or living in an unsafe situation, etc. That's "easier" in the West, where there are child protection laws, but there are many countries where are no child protection laws or services (and I say "easier" in quotes, because it is not easy to have to call child protection authorities on a family...). One has to be very thorough and very careful before starting research, and very protective of anyone they are studying. Half the population is under the age of 18. Tanzania's future is NOW...join the 50% campaign!
Also cultural differences between researchers and African communities would skew interpretation of research findings unless a very comprehensive understanding of that particular community or culture was present through the design of the research.
And now my brain runs off to wonder if the local presence of many people who have experienced a similar trauma, in itself builds resilience?
Thanks for this diary Bob, I'm looking forward to the next one too. Ad astra per aspera
http://cfp.english.upenn.edu/archive/Theory/0703.html
Despite Cathy Caruth's claim in her landmark collection "Trauma: Explorations in Memory" that "trauma itself may provide the very link between cultures," trauma has been infrequently explored from cross-cultural and non-Western perspectives. This panel seeks to examine the relationship between trauma and culture, to explore and possibly critique the Eurocentric perspective of trauma studies, and to investigate the manner in which trauma reinvigorates psychoanalysis with the work of cultural critique. Paper topics might consider the following questions: How does culture theorize trauma? Do differentcultures and histories require different theories? What are the ethical problems involved in using European-originated theories for non-European or postcolonial traumatic histories? What are the ethics of cross-cultural comparisons of trauma?
Paper topics might consider the following questions:
How does culture theorize trauma? Do differentcultures and histories require different theories? What are the ethical problems involved in using European-originated theories for non-European or postcolonial traumatic histories? What are the ethics of cross-cultural comparisons of trauma?
neither I read the book.. so I do not have the foggiest idea about cross-cultural trauma... no frigging clue. But the danger of imposing ethnocentrics vision of traumas or looking for traumas in places where tehere is none always exist....
But no idea....
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
I don't know anything about psychology but in social constructionist terms, we pick apart the natural vs the social and the various factors (in a non-technical sense) that contribute to both.
What is common sense knowledge and where does it come from? Why does common sense dictate that a person who goes through a trauma will end up a certain way and is it true? Do natural factors such as personality and intelligence dictate the outcome or do social factors provide the largest influence? What about expectations on individuals within a particular society and the role that they are expected to play in a community? How about the way that communities respond to trauma that has occurred for individuals. Where do the norms of a particular community at any particular point in time, come from?
It is so complex to try to unpick all the different influences, especially depending on whose norms are being applied in order to gauge what is healthy or unhealthy. Ad astra per aspera
The supportive or non-supportive functioning of a community might be largely the same across all cultures, and some behaviours might have similar psychological effects regardless of whether or not they are considered "healthy", which is why you need to objectify (or intersubjectify) the measurement.
To put this in a charged way: a kid in a culture in which beating is considered de rigeur - as it was in our cultures not too long ago - may still flinch when you raise your hand.
