Measuring resilience and wellbeing in young Aboriginal people: A psychometric evaluation

Ella R Gorman

Background: Supporting strength and resilience among young Aboriginal people in Australia is of utmost importance in ensuring the health and wellbeing of future generations. Resilience is a key concept that, when understood within a culturally relevant context, can support the social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) and positive trajectories for young Aboriginal people experiencing challenges. An important aspect of understanding these constructs is having the means to measure them using methods that are accurate and reliable. For this to occur, measures must be culturally relevant. There is currently a lack of quantitative resilience or SEWB instruments that have been rigorously psychometrically examined for use with young Aboriginal people, resulting in a dearth of instruments available to clinicians, policymakers, programme providers, researchers and communities. Objectives/aims: The aim of this thesis was to psychometrically evaluate three widely used yet diverse self-reported measures of resilience and SEWB for samples of Aboriginal youth. These measures are the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) and Strong Souls. Methods: Cross-sectional data for three out of the four empirical studies constituting this thesis were collected from young Aboriginal people aged 15–25 years, and living on Wadjuk Noongar country in the Perth metropolitan region of Western Australia and Gamilaroi country in regional New South Wales. These studies focused on the CD-RISC-10 (N= 122), the CYRM (N = 255), and Strong Souls (N = 154). The fourth study used data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC). These data comprised responses to the Resilience subscale of Strong Souls from Aboriginal youth aged 11½–13 years (n = 516). Using WINSTEPS software, all four studies applied Rasch measurement modelling techniques to ascertain psychometric properties of the instruments and their efficacy for use with young Aboriginal people. Results: For all four studies, analyses revealed inconsistencies between the instrument data and the Rasch model, indicating the instruments were not psychometrically functioning as intended for young Aboriginal people. Findings included evidence for multidimensionality, item misfit, and lower person and item separation and reliability indexes than expected for instruments that can reliably differentiate construct levels between participants and items. Conclusion: This thesis presents novel findings regarding the functioning of prominent quantitative resilience and wellbeing instruments for young Aboriginal people. While the results of each of the four studies suggest that these instruments, in their current form, are not measuring these constructs as reliably or accurately as necessary for confident use, suggestions for ways forward, including new item generation, and careful construct consideration, are discussed. These findings also contribute to broader discussions regarding how resilience in particular is conceptualised, defined and measured, specifically in the context of supporting young Aboriginal people in Australia. These findings contribute to improving measurement for use in evaluating the impact of policy, programmes and interventions aimed at supporting the wellbeing and resilience of young Aboriginal people.

Measuring resilience and wellbeing in young Aboriginal people: A psychometric evaluation

Files and links (1)

Abstract

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Metrics