xxix As used here, the term resilience represents the manifestation of positive adaptation despite
significant life adversity. Resilience is not a child attribute that can be directly measured; rather, it is
a process or phenomenon that is inferred from the dual coexisting conditions of high adversity and relatively positive adaptation
in spite of this.
p.4 Resilience refers to patterns of positive adjustment in the context of significant risk or adversity.
Resilience is an inference about a person's life that requires two fundamental judgments: (1) that a person
is "doing okay" and (2) that there is now or has been significant risk or adversity to overcome (Masten & Coatsworth,
1998).
p.18 A resilience framework has implications for the detailed models of change that implicitly or
explicitly guide policy and intervention, as well as for the overarching conceptualization of these endeavors. Models
include assets and strengths as well as negative indicators of starting points and outcomes of interventions... Processes
of interest include protective and buffering effects, along with vulnerability and exacerbating effects. The function
of the new policy or intervention plan is conceived in these models in terms of redirecting development in more positive directions,
improving the odds of a good outcome, facilitating protection, enhancing or protecting assets, reducing vulnerability, preventing
or reducing risk, and so forth. Goals and processes can also be framed in parallel economic terms: building human capital
through the investment of social and financial capital
p.21 a deeper understanding is needed of the processes and produce resilience under different conditions
for different children in order to guide the efficacy and efficiency of policies and programs designed to shift the odds for
good developmental outcomes in more favorable directions. Careful study of "what works" in interventions and programs
based on risk/resilience frameworks will play an important role in refining theory and models of competence... in development.
p.42 As in other areas of research, this has spurred a search for resilience processes to aid understanding
of why some children succumb to the risk, whereas others do not
p.45 In the end, it is important to consider the question of how well resilience models fit the
phenomena under study, ultimately providing guidance about how to assist children at risk.
p.78 Following the work of Rutter (1987), we define resilience as "a successful adaptation despite
adversity."
p.214 The next important step for resilience research is to shift the focus from predicting positive outcomes
for children in adversity to studying mechanisms by which these outcomes are achieved... Our general theoretical model of
the mechanisms of resilience has been described previously... The model specifies that the impact of adversities and resources
is mediated through two common mechanisms, the development of age-appropriate competencies and the satisfaction of
basic needs and goals. Adversities are conceptualized as relations between the person and the environment
that threaten the satisfaction of these needs and competencies and thereby lead to disorder... Where resources
promote satisfaction of needs and competencies, they are called protective factors, and where they
have negative effects, they are called vulnerability factors. Resources and adversities are seen
as dynamically affecting each other over time.
The joint influence of adversities and resources on outcomes can be specified in terms of
main effects, interactive effects, and mediating effects models
p.249-250 In our view, resilience refers to an ongoing process of garnering resources that
enables the individual to negotiate current issues adaptively and provides a foundation for dealing with subsequent challenges,
as well as recovering from reversals of fortune. Resilience doesn't cause children to do well in the face
of adversity. Rather, resilience reflects the developmental process by which children acquire the ability to use both
internal and external resources to achieve positive adaptation despite prior or concomitant adversity. Developmental
history plays a key role in resilience; it is relevant to acquisition of coping capabilities as well as to the ability to
draw upon resources from the environment.
p.258 Resilience, then, is not an outcome in and of itself. Rather, it is a dynamic
developmental process that enables children to achieve positive adaptation despite prior or concomitant [JLJ - concomitant:
accompanied by or occurring at the same time] adversity. Therefore, resilience cannot be disassociated from
the child's current developmental context.
p.510 resilience - which, as defined in this book, is a process or phenomenon reflecting positive child
adjustment despite conditions of risk.
p.518 Among the most hotly debated issues in resilience research... is whether predictors of resilience
(or competence in the presence of risks) are synonymous with predictors of competence in general
p.524 Apart from mechanisms underlying known protective and vulnerability factors, also needed is
more attention to the mediators of the major adversity conditions (more often studied by risk rather than
resilience researchers)... In a related vein, also needed is more careful attention to disentangling third variables that
might be proxies for risk, that is, constructs that may actually carry much pf the adversity that is widely attributed
to a co-occurring condition.
