Sociology, Department of

 

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

March 2006

Comments

Published in Journal of Community Psychology 34:2 (March 2006), pp. 193–209; doi 10.1002/jcop.20090 Copyright © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Used by permission. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/32213/home

Abstract

This study examines resilience among a sample of American Indian adolescents living on or near reservations in the upper Midwest. Data are from a baseline survey of 212 youth (115 boys and 97 girls) who were enrolled in the fifth through eighth grades. Based upon the definition of resilience, latent class analyses were conducted to identify youth who displayed prosocial outcomes (60.5%) as opposed to problem behavior outcomes. A measure of family adversity was also developed that indicated only 38.4% of the youth lived in low-adversity households. Defining resilience in the context of positive outcomes in the face of adversity, logistic regression was used to examine the predictors of prosocial outcomes among youth who lived in moderate- to high-adversity households. The analyses identified key risk and protective factors. A primary risk factor appeared to be perceived discrimination. Protective factors were from multiple contexts: family, community, and culture. Having a warm and supportive mother, perceiving community support, and exhibiting higher levels of enculturation were each associated with increased likelihood of prosocial outcomes.

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