Peer-reviewed article
Designing resilience research: Using multiple methods to investigate risk exposure, promotive and protective processes, and contextually relevant outcomes for children and youth
Michael T. Ungar ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper proposes a framework for designing better research on childhood resilience. The authors argue that resilience studies should examine three key elements: the risks children face in their specific contexts, the internal and external resources that help them cope, and the outcomes that matter to local communities. By reviewing existing resilience research, the authors identify methodological problems that have created confusion about what resilience actually means and how it works. The paper offers guidance to help researchers produce more rigorous and culturally appropriate studies of how children overcome adversity.
Key points
- Resilience research must account for risk exposure that is relevant to specific contexts, not universal risks
- Studies should examine both internal resources (within the child) and external resources (in families, communities, systems) that support resilience
- Desired outcomes must be defined by stakeholders in different cultures rather than imposed by researchers
- Many resilience studies suffer from poor methodology and excessive generalization of findings across different contexts
- A three-part model addressing risk, protective processes, and contextually relevant outcomes improves both quantitative validity and qualitative trustworthiness
Limitations
This is a methodological paper proposing a framework rather than testing an intervention or reporting empirical findings. It cannot demonstrate whether the proposed three-part model actually produces better outcomes or how it might be applied in practice.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Inconsistent, poorly designed research on resilience in the human sciences has contributed to epistemological and ontological ambiguity which has fuelled claims that resilience as a concept is poorly theorized. OBJECTIVE: Building on research with abused and neglected children around the world, the objective of this paper is to show that studies of resilience must account for: (a) risk exposure (of relevance in different contexts); (b) promotive and protective processes (internal and external resources associated with resilience across systems); and (c) desired outcomes (as privileged by stakeholders in different cultures and contexts). METHOD: By identifying common aspects of resilience research from a purposeful selection of studies (ones with weak and strong methodologies), this paper identifies three dimensions of well-designed studies of childhood resilience. RESULTS: Attention to all three dimensions enhances both the empirical validity (in the quantitative research paradigm) and phenomenological trustworthiness (in qualitative research) of resilience research with children and families. Challenges researching resilience can also be resolved by designing studies that account for all three dimensions. These challenges include the lack of systemic thinking to account for contextual factors and other external threats to child wellbeing, and the excessive generalization of findings. CONCLUSION: This three-part model for resilience research reflects the very best practices among resilience researchers and has the potential to address the definitional and methodological ambiguity that plague studies of resilience.