Quantitative Measure Of Resilience Research Articles

A Longitudinal Investigation of Resilience as a Protective Factor During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID-19 is a global stressor that has been shown to impact mental health outcomes. Given that COVID-19 is a unique stressor that has been shown to have mental health consequences, identifying protective factors is imperative. The protective influences of resilience are demonstrated through the extant literature, though less is known about resilience and COVID-19 impact. The current study seeks to expand the existing literature on resilience, and on mental health outcomes influenced by COVID-19, by longitudinally investigating relative resilience as a buffer against posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and alcohol consumption, in the wake of a global pandemic. Participants included 549 undergraduates with a history of lifetime trauma exposure. Using a longitudinal path model, we tested the interaction between relative resilience (i.e., an individual's deviation from distress levels predicted by prior trauma exposure relative to other individuals in the same cohort) and COVID-19 impact domains (i.e., social media use, worry, exposure, change in substance use, and housing/food insecurity) on PTSD symptoms and alcohol consumption. Findings demonstrate a significant interaction between the COVID-19 worry impact domain and baseline resilience on later PTSD symptoms, whereby COVID-19 worry impacts PTSD symptoms at low levels of resilience (β = .26, p < .001), marginally impacts PTSD symptoms at mean levels of resilience (β = .09, p = .05), and does not impact PTSD symptoms at high levels of resilience (β = -.08, p = .16). There were no significant main effects nor interaction effects of resilience on alcohol consumption. This article adds to the literature on resilience and COVID-19 through examining both internalizing (i.e., PTSD) and substance use outcomes, using longitudinal data, and using a quantitative measure of resilience.

A psychometric evaluation of the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale for Australian Aboriginal youth

ABSTRACT Objective: There is a paucity of quantitative measures of resilience specifically validated for young Aboriginal people in Australia. We undertook the first investigation of validity and reliability of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) in a sample of Australian Aboriginal people, with a focus on youth. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional study of resilience among a sample of 122 Aboriginal youth (15–25 years old) in New South Wales and Western Australia, featuring self-completes of the 10-item CD-RISC in online (N = 22) and face-to-face (N = 100) settings. A Rasch analysis using the 122 CD-RISC responses determined item independence, response category adequacy, differential item functioning, unidimensional measurement, person and item reliability, and item fit. Confirmatory factor analysis was also conducted, complementary to the Rasch analysis. Results: Four problematic items from the original instrument were removed, due to item dependence (items 2, 6 and 9; Q 3,* > 0.30) and differential item functioning (item 4; > 0.43 logits between males and females). The final 6-item instrument exhibited improved item separation (ISI = 2.14) and reliability index values (IRI =.82) – suggesting an improved structure – however several limitations such as a prominent ceiling effect were evident (i.e., positive measure targeting coefficient of 0.99 logits). Conclusion: Findings suggest the CD-RISC instrument should be applied in Aboriginal contexts with caution. Further psychometric examination of the CD-RISC with Aboriginal youth is warranted before it can be used with confidence by researchers and clinicians. KEY POINTS What is already known about this topic: Resilience is generally thought of as positive outcomes despite exposure to risk. This can be a particularly important concept to consider in the period of youth and adolescence, when young people are experiencing wide ranging physical, emotional, and social changes and challenges. Aboriginal youth face unique circumstances that are necessary to consider when considering resilience relevant to an Aboriginal perspective. There is currently a lack in the literature in regards to defining and conceptualising resilience from an Aboriginal perspective, particularly relevant to young people. There is a dearth of instruments available that have been rigorously examined for their appropriateness and psychometric properties relating to resilience in Aboriginal youth. What this paper adds: This paper provides not only a first investigation of this version of the CD-RISC using Rasch analysis, but also the first time the CD-RISC’s validity and reliability has been assessed for an Aboriginal sample in Australia. Analyses results illustrated a ceiling effect, highlighting the fact that for the instrument to be accessing the full range of resilience in the sample, new items need to be developed to tap into higher levels of resilience. With the findings of this paper as a foundation, further investigation and adaptation of the CD-RISC could potentially lead to a useful screening tool for assessing resilience and identifying Aboriginal youth who may require further support.

Resilience Decision-Making for Complex Systems

Abstract Complex systems—such as gas turbines, industrial plants, and infrastructure networks—are of paramount importance to modern societies. However, these systems are subject to various threats. Novel research does not only focus on monitoring and improving the robustness and reliability of systems but also focus on their recovery from adverse events. The concept of resilience encompasses these developments. Appropriate quantitative measures of resilience can support decision-makers seeking to improve or to design complex systems. In this paper, we develop comprehensive and widely adaptable instruments for resilience-based decision-making. Integrating an appropriate resilience metric together with a suitable systemic risk measure, we design numerically efficient tools aiding decision-makers in balancing different resilience-enhancing investments. The approach allows for a direct comparison between failure prevention arrangements and recovery improvement procedures, leading to optimal tradeoffs with respect to the resilience of a system. In addition, the method is capable of dealing with the monetary aspects involved in the decision-making process. Finally, a grid search algorithm for systemic risk measures significantly reduces the computational effort. In order to demonstrate its wide applicability, the suggested decision-making procedure is applied to a functional model of a multistage axial compressor, and to the U-Bahn and S-Bahn system of Germany's capital Berlin.

A quantitative method for measuring regional economic resilience to the great recession

AbstractRegional economic resilience can be defined as an economy’s ability to withstand and recover quickly from shocks. The ability to measure resilience is necessary to developing our understanding of what influences resilience. In this paper, we develop a new, two‐dimensional quantitative measure of resilience using observed differences between expected and actual employment in a region following a shock and distinguish the response to the shock from random variation. We demonstrate one application of this metric to US county‐level employment data to compare county responses to the 2007–2009 national recession and discuss how different regions of the United States responded to the shock of the Great Recession in terms of resilience.

A resilience analysis approach for process design, integration and optimization

Resilience in response to disruption events is critical to the economic performance of process systems, but this concept has received limited attention in the literature. A general framework for resilience optimization is proposed to incorporate an improved quantitative measure of resilience and a comprehensive set of resilience enhancement strategies for process design and operations. The proposed framework identifies a set of disruptive events for a given system, and then formulates a multiobjective two-stage adaptive robust mixed-integer fractional programming model to optimize the resilience and economic objectives simultaneously. The model accounts for network configuration, equipment capacities, and capital costs in the first stage, and the number of available processes and operating levels in each time period in the second stage. The applicability of the proposed framework is demonstrated through an application on process network design and planning.

Resilience Quantification for Probabilistic Design of Cyber-Physical System Networks

Abstract Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are the physical systems of which individual components have functional identities in both physical and cyber spaces. Given the vastly diversified CPS components in dynamically evolving networks, designing an open and resilient architecture with flexibility and adaptability thus is important. To enable a resilience engineering approach for systems design, quantitative measures of resilience have been proposed by researchers. Yet, domain-dependent system performance metrics are required to quantify resilience. In this paper, generic system performance metrics for CPS are proposed, which are entropy, conditional entropy, and mutual information associated with the probabilities of successful prediction and communication. A new probabilistic design framework for CPS network architecture is also proposed for resilience engineering, where several information fusion rules can be applied for data processing at the nodes. Sensitivities of metrics with respect to the probabilistic measurements are studied. Fine-grained discrete-event simulation models of communication networks are used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed metrics.

On Multi-Phase and Multi-Stage Game-Theoretic Modeling of Advanced Persistent Threats

Advanced persistent threats (APT) are considered as a significant security threat today. Despite their diversity in nature and details, a common skeleton and sequence of phases can be identified that these attacks follow (in similar ways), which admits a game-theoretic description and analysis. This paper describes a general framework that divides a general APT into three major temporal phases, and fits an individual game model to each phase, connecting the games at the transition points between the phases (similarly to “milestones” accomplished during the launch of an APT). The theoretical description is derived from a running example. The benefit of this game-theoretic perspective is at least threefold, as it 1) helps to systematize the threat and respective mitigation actions (by turning them into pure strategies for the gameplay); 2) provides optimized actions for defense and attack, where the latter can be taken as a (non-unique) indication of neuralgic points; and 3) provides quantitative measures of resilience against an APT, in terms that can be defined freely by a security officer. We illustrate this approach with a numerical example.

Resilience to Interpersonal Trauma and Decreased Risk for Psychopathology in an Epidemiologic Sample

Quantitative measures of psychological resilience related to discrete stressors, such as interpersonal (IP) trauma, are lacking. The current study examined whether a novel, quantitative measure of resilience was related to decreased risk for a broad range of lifetime DSM-IV axis I disorders in an epidemiologic sample. Resilience was defined as the residual resulting from the difference between the individual’s predicted and observed PTSD symptom count, based on their cumulative exposure to IP traumatic events. Participants were 6288 adults (59.5% women; M age = 46.9, SD = 14.5) from the National Epidemiologic Study on Alcohol and Related Conditions endorsing at least one lifetime IP traumatic event. Logistic regressions were conducted to examine the relationship between resilience and axis I diagnoses, covarying for age, sex, education level, social support, and recent stressful life events. Greater resilience scores were associated with decreased likelihood of major depression (OR = .64, p < .001), generalized anxiety disorder (OR = .65, p < .001), social anxiety disorder (OR = .74, p < .001), panic disorder (OR = .65, p <. 001), and alcohol dependence (OR = .85, p < .001). Discrepancy between expected and observed PTSD symptom severity based on IP trauma load may represent a useful, quantitative measure of resilience.

Viability and resilience of small-scale fisheries through cooperative arrangements

AbstractThe small-scale fisheries sector in many Pacific islands is facing increasing challenges in relation to resource availability, economic opportunity, and demographic and social pressure. In particular, intensifying cash-oriented livelihood strategies can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and threaten food security and resource conservation. In this paper the authors develop a bio-economic model and a quantitative measure of resilience in order to explore the interaction between socio-economic and ecological dynamics, and to analyze the potential role that cooperation and collective arrangements can play in this interaction to maintain the viability of the system. Based on the case of the system known aswantoktypically found in the Solomon Islands, numerical examples are used to explore the potential gain that cooperation between fishers can bring in terms of subsistence, profitability and ecological performances, as well as the resilience of the whole system to shocks.

Interventions to build resilience in family caregivers of people living with dementia: a comprehensive systematic review.

Recent studies have indicated that family caregivers of people with dementia have higher rates of depression, anxiety and hopelessness, as well as higher levels of burden, stress and distress. Not all caregivers, however, succumb to the negative effects of caring. Caregivers who are able to recover from, resist or adapt to the physical and psychological demands of caring can be considered "resilient". The objective of this review was to examine the existing evidence regarding interventions for building resilience in family caregivers of people living with dementia. This review considered studies that included family caregivers of people with dementia. Studies investigating interventions to build resilience in family caregivers were considered by the review. For qualitative studies, the phenomena of interest were family caregivers' experiences of the interventions including factors affecting implementation and their subjective experience of outcomes. Studies conducted in any cultural or geographical context and any settings including participants' homes in the community, residential aged care or hospital, medical or allied health practice were considered for inclusion. Quantitative studies incorporating experimental and descriptive study designs and qualitative studies, including, but not limited to, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, action research and feminist research were considered for inclusion. Quantitative studies were included that contained either objective or subjective outcome measures (or a combination of both). In cases in which proxy measures of resilience were used, only those papers that explicitly related the aims of the intervention and the measurement of outcomes to resilience itself were considered for inclusion. Proxies could include, but were not limited to, self-efficacy, locus of control, perceived burden, psychological wellbeing, strength, coping, positive adjustment and resourcefulness. Qualitative studies were similarly considered for inclusion if they explicitly related the aims of the intervention to resilience. Eleven electronic databases were searched for research studies published in English in or after 1990. Quantitative and qualitative studies selected for retrieval were assessed by two independent reviewers for methodological validity using standardized critical appraisal instruments from the Joanna Briggs Institute Meta-Analysis of Statistics Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-MAStARI) and Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-QARI). Quantitative and qualitative data were extracted from publications included in the review using the standardized data extraction tools from JBI-MAStARI and JBI-QARI. It was not possible to pool quantitative findings for statistical meta-analysis using JBI-MAStARI. Qualitative research findings were too limited to be pooled using the JBI-QARI. The findings are presented in narrative form. The review included three publications reporting one quantitative intervention study and one mixed-method intervention study. There was a lack of available studies and, of the two intervention studies that were identified, neither found any statistically significant change in quantitative measures of resilience. Qualitative data suggested positive impacts of a poetry writing intervention and a positive experience of the intervention. The studies differed in both the nature of the intervention and the way resilience was conceptualized and operationalized. Consequently, it was not possible to offer any recommendations for practice. Implications for research relate to the development of a more comprehensive theory of resilience in family caregivers that can be used to develop and rigorously evaluate reliable and valid measures of resilience in line with that theory. Further, well-designed, sufficiently powered intervention studies informed by theory are needed.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is an independent risk factor for lower resilience in adolescents: a pilot study.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with impaired daily functioning in a wide range of domains. Resilience, the ability to overcome and recover from challenges, has been scarcely investigated in ADHD and could potentially provide novel strategies for treatment. However, since ADHD is often comorbid with other clinical conditions, it is necessary to better understand if it impairs resilience levels when controlled for other variables. This pilot study is the first to investigate the correlation between quantitative measures of resilience and ADHD using strict diagnostic criteria by controlling this correlation for comorbid conditions. Twelve adolescents diagnosed with ADHD via semi-structured interview using Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) were compared to 12 adolescents exhibiting typical development, regarding resilience, in an analysis controlled for anxiety and depression levels, socioeconomic status, and intelligence quotient (IQ). The ADHD group was less resilient than the control group (p < 0.01). Importantly, resilience in the ADHD group was not correlated with depression or anxiety, age, intelligence level, and socioeconomic status. ADHD seems to be associated with lower resilience, which cannot be explained by depression, anxiety, intelligence level, age, or socioeconomic status.

Evaluating Discontinuities in Complex Systems: Toward Quantitative Measures of Resilience

The textural discontinuity hypothesis (TDH) is based on the observation that animal body mass distributions exhibit discontinuities that may reflect the texture of the landscape available for exploitation. This idea has been extended to other complex systems, hinting that the identification and quantification of discontinuities in the distributions of appropriate variables may provide clues to emergent system properties such as resilience. We propose a discontinuity index, based on the vector norm of the full assemblage of observed discontinuities, as a means to quantify and compare this characteristic among systems. We also evaluate four methods to identify the number and location of the most prominent discontinuities. Although results of the four methods are similar, they are not identical, and we conclude that this problem is best addressed with a consistent operationally defined approach in an adaptive inference framework.

A Framework to Quantitatively Assess and Enhance the Seismic Resilience of Communities

This paper presents a conceptual framework to define seismic resilience of communities and quantitative measures of resilience that can be useful for a coordinated research effort focusing on enhancing this resilience. This framework relies on the complementary measures of resilience: “Reduced failure probabilities,” “Reduced consequences from failures,” and “Reduced time to recovery.” The framework also includes quantitative measures of the “ends” of robustness and rapidity, and the “means” of resourcefulness and redundancy, and integrates those measures into the four dimensions of community resilience—technical, organizational, social, and economic—all of which can be used to quantify measures of resilience for various types of physical and organizational systems. Systems diagrams then establish the tasks required to achieve these objectives. This framework can be useful in future research to determine the resiliency of different units of analysis and systems, and to develop resiliency targets and detailed analytical procedures to generate these values.