Session: Ways of Coping and Early Life Precursors of Resilience: Mixed Methods Studies (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

This organized panel presentation examines factors associated with the construct of resilience as measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and by a 6-level Clinical Rating of Resilience.  Results will be examined for a diverse sample of adult community residents drawn from the Corazon research studies, which consist of a total sample of 303 male and female participants.  This panel will also introduce the Integrative Mixed Methods methodology and will present an application of this methodology that involves a thematic analysis of coping responses (cognitive and behavioral), and expressed affective states (anger, anxiety, depression, and fear) in response to a severe life stressor, and as predictors of levels of resilience, when assessed by these two measures of resilience.  Paper 1 will present an overview of fundamentals of the Integrative Mixed methods methodology, as described and evaluated in prior published results.  New developments in this methodology will also be described.  Paper 2 will present the results of analyses for a sample of 104 Hispanic males and females. In this study, true mixed methods hierarchical multiple regression model analyses were conducted.  These model analyses examine the effects of qualitatively-derived thematic variables (these inductively-generated ways of coping and affective states), when entered as predictor variables along with conventional measured variables, all as predictors of these two resilience outcomes. Paper 3 will present results of conventional hierarchical multiple regression model analyses also for a subsample of participants from the Corazon research studies.  This subsample consists of 258 Hispanic and White non-Hispanic males, in an examination of the influence of key variables, including early life factors, as predictors of these two measures of resilience, and also for a Life Satisfaction scale. These results also explore the multifactorial aspects of resilience.  These two sets of analyses set the stage for the “recontextualization” of study results, for a deep-structure analyses of the complex construct of resilience.  Re-contextualization refers to a return to the original texts narratives, and allows our use of a deep-structure analysis that includes our “storyline analyses” that integrates themes expressed by select cases as identified from prior statistically-significant results. Thus, we return to an analysis of the original text narratives to conduct deep-structure analyses of the various aspects of the complex construct of resilience.