The most experienced group I know is headed by psychologist Laurie Leech who I did some training with in Santa Fe on Trauma Resiliency Model. Worth a contact - traumaresourceinstitute.com

You may want to look at the work of Michael Ungar at Dalhousie University in Halifax and also at Cécile Rousseau's work with refugees in Montreal. Are you looking for mental health measures specifically?

The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC, 2003) has been validated in

different languages and on a variety of international samples, including

refugee children and adolescents. One study in particular aimed to explore the nature of psychological resilience in refugee adolescents in Australia and the relationship between resilience and depression, other emotional and behavioural problems, and mental health service uptake. One hundred and seventy multiethnic refugee adolescents aged 13–17 from South Australia were administered a survey

comprising the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

(SDQ9). This is the citation for the article:

Tahereh Ziaian, Helena de Anstiss, Georgia Antoniou, Peter Baghurst, and

Michael Sawyer, “Resilience and Its Association with Depression, Emotional

and Behavioural Problems, and Mental Health Service Utilisation among

Refugee Adolescents Living in South Australia,” International Journal of

Population Research, vol. 2012, Article ID 485956, 9 pages, 2012.

doi:10.1155/2012/485956

I am not sure about the Wagnild and Young (1993) Resilience Scale (RS or

RS-14), but it has also been widely used on international populations and validated in many different languages.

Thank you everyone. I will be looking up those resources :-)

It is very important that a scale of resilience NOT be defined by a lack of distress. Otherwise, when one relates it to negative outcomes, one will increase the chances of observing a circular or tautological relationship. I prefer to think of resilience in terms of theoretical constructs such as sense of coherence (Antonosky, seeing meaning in one's life), optimism, self-esteem and self-efficacy. I have collected data on these constructs over time and had intended to develop a global (perhaps latent variable), but there is not enough time in the day. Please examine the resilience measures you have mentioned and make sure that the items do not include distress items. Focus more on tapping into processes that can be used to operationalize resilience. Psychosocial constructs (resilience, distress) will always have some overlap, but we do not need to encourage this with our measures or else we will look like fools. Having been in a medical school for a long time, the last thing we need is to be mocked by physiologists or researchers who measure things that are more easily observed. Finally, check out other ways to assess resilience such as potential genetic markers........the gene OXTR on the sixth chromosome. Read about interrelationships of negative affect, empathy and resilience.

Peter, your comment is very important!

i would be also interested in a good resilience questionnaire for refugees.

do you have any idea for a good resilience scale based on your experience?

Naser, I do not have a good resilience measure. When I write my data up for a longitudinal study I finished on chronic stress, I will use the indicators I mentioned earlier to try to estimate a latent variable of resilience. I truly believe that sense of coherence, self-esteem, optimism and self-efficacy are potential indicators of resilience. Of course, they are all associated with distress, but the item overlap does not appear to be as extensive as in the resilience measures I have seen.

There is quite a bit of research going around serotonin receptors, especially serotonin transporter. If you make a search on PubMed with the keywords 5HTTLPR and stress may find some interesting stuff. Variations on oxytocin gene, as already mentioned by some colleagues is also seems to be related to empathy, social behavior etc. Nowadays it is not so difficult to genotype, so it may worth considering.

I was also going to recommend the Australian study by Tahereh Ziaian on refugee children.

I also concur with Peter's point about checking carefully what purported 'resilience scales' actually measure. Measuring resilience is a very difficult task, and i think that it's important not to see it as a stable personality trait, because a person may show resilience in one domain or at one point in time, but not another. I think it is more useful to operationally define 'resilience skills' or skills that help a person to be more resilient in times of adversity, such as self-esteem, optimism, self-efficacy, self-control, and then consider these together as a latent construct (as Peter Vitaliano suggested).

I suggest Ego-Resiliency Scale (Block & Kremen, 1996). It is a short inventory, to assess trait based psychological resilience

Thank you everyone. I highy appreciate the ideas, discourse and measures. I will be looking into more research for my dissertation based on this discussion. Nice to also see that some of my preliminary thoughts on resilience are also confirmed. So excited for continuing my research. So thank you again.

Hello,

Does anyone know where I could obtain the PMLD -Post Migration Living Difficulties checklist from?

Appreciate your help greatly!