engleski

Family resilience: youth at risk and parent’s perspective

At this stage of family research development, it is hard to recognize straightforward way of defining and approaching family resilience. In research named Specific characteristics of families at risk: contribution to complex interventions planning (University of Zagreb Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences) this challenge was faced. Through research process definition of family resilience was defined as process of effectively negotiating, adapting to, or managing significant sources of stress or trauma (risk). Assets and resources within the individual, their life and environment (protective factors) facilitate this capacity for adaptation and 'bouncing back' (good outcome) in the face of adversity (adapted from Windle, 2011). Entire research is aiming towards identifying characteristics of specific groups of families at risk, their resilience, readiness for change, readiness for intervention ; and life satisfaction, as a set of new, under-researched processes, which could be of importance for complex family interventions planning. To operationalize all these processes several instruments were applied. Two questionnaires – Family Resilience Scale (Sixbey, 2005) and Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale (Faces-IV Package) (Olson, D.H., Gorall, D., and Tiesel, J., 2010) were used in pilot study in order to find out appropriate measures for family resilience. The first instrument was previously applied in Croatia so adapted (Ferić, Maurović, Žižak, 2016.) version is slightly different from original version. Six scales measure Family communication and problem solving, Ability to make meaning of adversity, Neighbors support, Family spirituality, Family connectedness and Security and support in the community. FACES-IV includes measures of family cohesion and flexibility (six scales), communication (1 scale) and family satisfaction (1 scale). Data were obtained from 115 young people (age 12 to 18) that were, in connection with their behavioral problems, included in at least one of interventions delivered by center for social work in 4 towns (Čakovec, Osijek, Rijeka, Pula) and 110 adults, their parent (mainly mothers – 72%) or custodian parent (grandmother and grandfather – 4%) living in the same household. Factor analyses were applied separately for each instrument and each subsample. Different factor solution were tested. Results for Family Resilience Scale were different for subsample, and according to that, it is not acceptable to calculate overall result in the same way. Similar results were obtained for FACES-IV, except for one scale – Family satisfaction scale (Cronbach alpha for young people subsample = , 933 ; and for adults subsample = , 924. According to that, it was decided to construct new instrument for measuring family resilience in the main research and to keep one of FACES-IV scales (Family satisfaction scale).

Family Resilience Assessment Scale (FRAS), family resilience assessment, Croatian contex

The project is founded by Croatian Science Foundation (CSF IP-2014-09-9515)