'n Vergelyking van veerkragtige en nie-veerkragtige adolessente ten opsigte van beskermende faktore

[摘要] English: South African middle-adolescents are confronted daily with developmental and environmental challenges as well as risk factors. Consequently, there is a need for the empowerment and development of resiliency amongst adolescents in South Africa in order to design more suitable interventions. Resilience is conceptualised from a normal developmental perspective as a sense of mastery and relatedness (both suggesting resilience) and emotional reactivity (suggesting vulnerability). The aggregation of these three components creates a resilience profile which reflects the adolescent's unique strengths and weaknesses. A number of studies indicate that protective factors, both assets and resources, contribute to resilience. The aim of this study was to determine how male and female middle-adolescents with various resiliency profiles differ from one another with regard to protective factors. The different groups were compared in respect of five protective factors, namely intrapersonal, interpersonal and affective strengths, school functioning and family involvement. This study was quantitative and non-experimental and followed a criterion group design. The sample consisted of 973 Grade 10 learners, selected from each of the five districts in the Free State. The measuring instruments included a biographical questionnaire, Epstein and Sharma's (1998) Behavioural and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS) and Prince-Embury's (2007) Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents (RSCA). The results from the study indicate two important findings. First, it was found that both male and female participants scored low with regard to resilience and strengths. Secondly, a significant difference was found between the various groups with regard to the level of strengths that they use. It was shown, for instance, that groups that reported higher levels of resiliency tended to show lower levels of strengths. Consequently, the results are both surprising and worrying and lead to the following question: from which sources do adolescents draw in order to achieve resilience? The study revealed a clear need for more relevant research and measuring instruments in the South African context in order to effectively measure and comprehend these constructs.

[发布机构] University of the Free State