Pathways to Resilience IV: Global South Perspectives

Symposium Summary
Unveiling complex relationships: Adult resilience and aspects of risk, vulnerability and protection around the world
Presenters: Odin Hjemdal, Roxanna Morote, Frederick Anyan
In this symposium we present diverse methods to explore the still uncovered connections between protective factors of adult resilience evaluated with the Resilience Scale for Adults, affective symptoms of anxiety or depression, other protective mechanisms such as hope, and aspects of risk (life-stress) in Europe, Asia and Latin America

Symposium Abstracts
Resilience or hope? Incremental and convergent validity of the Resilience Scale for Adults, the Herth Hope Scale predicting affects
Presenter: Roxanna Morote (NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)
Co-Authors: Odin Hjemdal
Introduction: Resilience and Hope protect against vulnerabilities or life adversities; they comprise cognitive, social, family, transcendental and affective mechanisms that may act together in different cultural contexts. However, they are studied in complementary or competing theoretical frameworks, therefore, the study of measures of resilience and hope should determine incremental validity. 
Methods: Participants are 762 adults (18 to 74 years old). They answered the RSA, HHS, Spanish Language Stressful Life-Events (SL-SLE), and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25). Incremental validity analyses combined three criteria to compare hierarchical regression models (R2Diff,  ΔF, and semi-partial r), and mediation analyses.   Hope and resilience account significantly for the variance of affective symptoms above age, gender and stress; (2) Resilience Total score has greater incremental validity than Hope; The SEM analyses verified a stronger direct effect of resilience in the prediction of affective symptoms above the significant partial mediated effect of resilience through hope. 
Findings:  Implications: The RSA has incremental validity above the HHS, however both are effective, differentiated and complementary measures of protection that are of high relevance for research on Hispanic Latin America. 

Modelling contingent effects: A conditional process model of the protective effects of resilience
Presenter: Frederick Anyan (NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)
Co-Authors: Odin Hjemdal
Introduction: A preponderance of resilience studies either modelled mediation or moderation separately without taking into account the potential contingencies of counteracting indirect negative effects. These obvious gaps have also resulted in oversimplification of complex processes that can be clarified by conditional process modelling. 
Methods: Two hundred and six Australian participants (females = 114; males = 91; other = 1) completed the Patient Health Questionnaire – 9, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Stressful Negative Life Events Questionnaire and the Resilience Scale for Adults in a cross-sectional survey. Moderated mediation analysis with maximum likelihood estimation in Stata 14 was conducted.   Anxiety symptoms mediated the relationship between exposure to stressful negative life events and depressive symptoms. Conditional indirect effect of exposure to stressful negative life events on depressive symptoms mediated by anxiety symptoms was a decreasing function of resilience protective resources.  
Findings: Conditional process modelling clarifies the contingent nature by which transmission of a variable’s effect is associated with other variables and provides derivations, quantifications and hypotheses tests about such contingent effects. 

A prospective study of conditional processes of the protective effects of resilience using the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA) 
Presenter: Odin Hjemdal (NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)
Co-Authors: Frederick Anyan 
Introduction: Resilience is a complicated construct with complicated processes. Teasing out these processes has proven difficult. Statistical advances open up for more nuanced analyses which avoids oversimplification of complex processes. This paper takes into account the potential contingencies of variables in the resilience process. 
Methods: One hundred and eighty-one Norwegian participants completed the Hopkins Symptom Check List-25 depression and anxiety, Stressful Negative Life Events Questionnaire and the Resilience Scale for Adults in a prospective survey. Moderated mediation analysis with maximum likelihood estimation in Stata 14 was conducted.   The findings indicate that the conditional indirect effect of exposure to stressful negative life events on depressive symptoms mediated by anxiety symptoms was a decreasing function of resilience protective resources.  
Findings: These findings clarify the conditional relation between variables indicating that resilience processes vary for different depending on the initial level of resilience.  It may indicate how differentiation in future interventions should be addressed.