Browsing by Author "Ungar, Michael"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    Adapting visual methodologies to identify youth protective processes in negotiating resilience across cultures and contexts
    (Australian Psychological Society, 2011-08) Cameron, Catherine Ann; Theron, Linda; Ungar, Michael; Liebenberg, Linda
    This paper reports on methodological innovations in an ecological investigation of protective processes in the experiences of youths in transition in eight locations around the globe. Several visual methods were enlisted in working with thriving early adolescents in challenging transitional or relocational situations. Resilience is viewed here as processes that are contextually and culturally specific functional adaptations to environmental challenges. Such adaptations were determined by local Community Advisors (CAs) to signal that a youth was ‘growing up well’ (Ungar, 2008). The methodologies adapted to this study of youth involved videotaping one full day in the life of each participant (Gillen, Cameron, Tapanya, Pinto, Hancock, Young, & Accorti Gamannossi, 2006), a photo elicitation procedure (Liebenberg, 2009), and semistructured interviews with the youths to engage their reflective responses to our interpretations of their daily experiences. The international, interdisciplinary research team co-constructed their understanding of protective factors in the youths’ days through viewing and reviewing the visual materials in concert with the participants’ perceptions of them and in consultation with local CAs. The lessons learned from adapting these visual methods to gain appreciation of protective processes in youths’ lives are offered.
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    Assessing resilience across cultures using mixed methods : construction of the child and youth resilience measure
    (SAGE, 2011) Ungar, Michael; Liebenberg, Linda
    An international team of investigators in 11 countries have worked collaboratively to develop a culturally and contextually relevant measure of youth resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28). The team used a mixed methods design that facilitated understanding of both common and unique aspects of resilience across cultures. Quantitative and qualitative stages to its development ensure the CYRM-28 has good content-related validity across research sites. Crossover comparison analyses of the findings from the quantitative administration of the pilot measure with 1,451 youth and qualitative interviews with 89 youth support the CYRM-28 as a culturally sensitive measure of youth resilience. The implications of this mixed methods approach to the development of measures for cross-cultural research are discussed.
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    Community resilience for youth and families : facilitative physical and social capital in contexts of adversity
    (Elsevier, 2011) Ungar, Michael
    Studies that focus on community-level factors associated with the resilience of youth and families reflect a shift in perspective from community deficits to the potential of communities to facilitate the mobilization of human and physical resources. Physical and social capital (both informal relationships and formal service provision) give communities the potential to recover from dramatic change, sustain their adaptability, and support new growth. This paper reviews key concepts such as these as they relate to how young people access informal supports and formal services that promote resilience. A discussion of the relevant research highlights the way protective processes function when children, youth and families are exposed to catastrophic humanmade and natural events. Five principles are suggested to help promote community resilience. Implications for the design and implementation of interventions are discussed with a focus on making informal supports more available and formal services coordinated, continuous, co-located, negotiated, culturally relevant and effective.
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    Day in the lives of four resilient youths : cultural roots of resilience
    (SAGE, 2011) Theron, Linda; Cameron, Catherine Ann; Didkowsky, Nora; Lau, Cindy; Liebenberg, Linda; Ungar, Michael
    Grounded in the examples of four impoverished, relocated youths (two Sesotho-speaking orphans in South Africa and two Mexican immigrants in Canada), we explore cultural factors as potential roots of resilience. We triangulate rich qualitative findings (visual, dialogical, and observational) to foreground the particular, as well as acknowledge the universal, in explicating resilience in transitional contexts. Resilience-promoting cultural practices rely on adults to function as custodians of protective practices and values and on youth actively to accept their roles as cultural cocustodians. Our findings urge service providers toward forefronting the specific cultural context of young people in their therapeutic interventions and toward purposefully championing resilience-promoting cultural values and practices.
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    Ethical concerns regarding participation of marginalized youth in research
    (International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD), 2011) Liebenberg, Linda; Ungar, Michael
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    Families as navigators and negotiators : facilitating culturally and contextually specific expressions of resilience
    (John Wiley & Sons, 2010) Ungar, Michael
    A social ecological model of resilience is used to show that resilience is dependent on a family's ability to both access available resources that sustain individual and collective well-being, as well as participate effectively in the social discourse that defines which resources are culturally and contextually meaningful. In this paper both clinical evidence and a review of the research inform an integrated social ecological model of practice that is focused on advocating for the mental health resources necessary to nurture resilience, including the individual and family processes of coconstruction of meaning. Family therapists can help marginalized families living in challenging contexts develop skills as both navigators who access resources, as well as negotiators who are able to convince therapists and other service providers of what are culturally and contextually meaningful sources of support. A case study of an African-Canadian youth and his family will be presented. The implications of this approach to assessing therapeutic outcomes will also be discussed.
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    Social ecology of resilience : addressing contextual and cultural ambiguity of a nascent construct
    (John Wiley & Sons, 2011) Ungar, Michael
    More than two decades after E. E. Werner and R. S. Smith (1982), N. Garmezy (1983), and M. Rutter (1987) published their research on protective mechanisms and processes that are most likely to foster resilience, ambiguity continues regarding how to define and operationalize positive development under adversity. This article argues that, because resilience occurs even when risk factors are plentiful, greater emphasis needs to be placed on the role social and physical ecologies play in positive developmental outcomes when individuals encounter significant amounts of stress. Four principles are presented as the basis for an ecological interpretation of the resilience construct: decentrality, complexity, atypicality, and cultural relativity. These 4 principles, and the research upon which they are based, inform a definition of resilience that emphasizes the environmental antecedents of positive growth. This framework can guide future theory development, research, and the design of interventions that promote well-being among populations who experience environments that inhibit resilience-promoting processes.
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    Using visual methods to capture embedded processes of resilience for youth across cultures and contexts
    (PubMed, 2012-02) Didkowsky, Nora; Ungar, Michael; Liebenberg, Linda
    Objectives: We review the value of using visual data in a dialogue with youth, to reflect, explore and find language to better understand processes of resilience. Methods: The argument is demonstrated with examples from the Negotiating Resilience Project (NRP): an international study of 16 youth which uses video recording a day in the life of youth participants, photographs produced by youth, and reflective interviews with the youth about their visual data. Results: Three examples from the NRP are used to show the ways that visual methods can capture and elucidate previously hidden aspects of youth’s positive psychosocial development in stressful social ecologies. Conclusion: Incorporating images as research data can aid in understanding previously unarticulated constructions of youth resilience. When the researcher is reflexive about power dynamics and their role in co-constructing the research environment, visual methods have the potential to reduce power imbalances in the field, meaningfully engage youth in the research process, and help to overcome language barriers.
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    Visual perspectives on majority-world adolescent thriving
    (Society for Research on Adolescence, 2013) Cameron, Catherine Ann; Tapanya, Sombat; Lau, Cindy; Theron, Linda; Chun Li; Liebenberg, Linda; Ungar, Michael
    This paper offers socio-ecological, situated perspectives on adolescent resilience derived from an application of interpretive visual methodologies to deepen understanding of adaptive youth development in diverse majority-world cultural contexts (South Africa, Thailand, China, Mexican migration to Canada). The research is not “cross-cultural”; by contrast, it situates youth engagement contextually, using local perspectives, especially perspectives of adolescents themselves, on “growing up well” under adverse circumstances, to interrogate conceptions of resilience in cultural context. Participants are viewed as members of cultural communities: observations with a small number of individuals are not generalized to national groups. Rather, knowledge gained by these methods is employed to enrich knowledge of the processes of majority-world youth thriving despite such adversities as poverty and social displacement.
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    What is resilience across cultures and contexts? : advances to the theory of positive development among individuals and families under stress
    (Taylor & Francis Group, 2010) Ungar, Michael
    A convergence of epistemological innovations occurring in fields as diverse as sociology, ecology, and the cross-cultural study of psychology makes it difficult to assert what is and is not a benchmark of positive development under stress. Although these innovations complicate the study of resilience, understanding developmental outcomes of individuals and families as variable across cultures and contexts helps to broaden how we conceptualize protective processes. In this article, I use examples from family therapy and research to explore these areas of innovation. A definition of resilience based on these innovations explains how positive outcomes are the result of navigation to health resources and negotiation for resources to be provided in meaningful ways. Four implications for practice are discussed.