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Amity L. Noltemeyer and Kevin R. Bush
Adversity and resilience: A synthesis of international research

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DOI: 10.1177/0143034312472758
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Article
Adversity and resilience:
A synthesis of
international research
Amity L. Noltemeyer
Miami University, USA
Kevin R. Bush
Miami University, USA
Abstract
Children and adolescents worldwide experience a variety of adversities that have the
potential to disrupt typical development. However, some of these individuals exhibit
resilience, evidencing normal development in the face of adversity. Here we review
research on these constructs of risk, adversity, and resilience; synthesize international
research on factors that may serve to protect children and adolescents from the nega-
tive effects of adversity at the individual, family, school, community, and cultural levels;
and provide future implications for research on this topic, highlighting the unique con-
tributions of the subsequent articles in this special issue, each of which contributes to an
understanding of resilience processes in non-Western populations. Although some gen-
eral trends in resilience and protection may extend beyond national borders, resilience
is also strongly influenced by culture and context; therefore, it is important to advance a
research agenda that recognizes the unique protective influences within and across
cultural contexts.
Keywords
Adverse experiences, adversity, children, protection, resilience, risk, vulnerability
Children and adolescents worldwide experience a variety of adverse experiences
that have the potential to disrupt typical development. These experiences are
diverse in their sources, intensity, and manifestations. Somesuch as family dis-
cord, armed conict, homelessness, food insecurity, and child maltreatmenthave
a propensity to be socially induced. Others, including some forms of chronic illness
Corresponding author:
Amity L. Noltemeyer, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, 201 McGuffey Hall, Miami University,
Oxford, Ohio 45056, USA.
Email: anoltemeyer@muohio.edu
and bereavement as well as natural disasters, often have organic origins.
Unfortunately, an increasing number of children and adolescents are impacted
by natural disasters, concurrent with a parallel growth in the incidence of several
socially induced stressors (e.g. Williams, 2007). Although these events can exert
impact at any lifespan juncture, children in early developmental stages are particu-
larly sensitive to the eects of such risk factors (Keiley, Howe, Dodge, Bates, &
Pettit, 2001; Schoon et al., 2002). However, despite the unfavorable correlates of
these adverse experiences, some children and youth who are exposed to them dem-
onstrate more positive outcomes than others. These children exhibit resilience,
evidencing normal development in the face of adversity.
Professionals providing psychological services in the schools share a commit-
ment to improve the educational, social-emotional, and life outcomes of children.
In order to do so, it is important to understand the factors that can be harnessed to
maximize healthy development in the midst of adverse circumstances. Although
some commonalities may extend beyond national borders, evidence also suggests
that resilience is a contextually and culturally inuenced construct (e.g. Ungar,
2008). Not only are some types of risk factors localized to particular cultural or
social systems, but so too are some of the protective factors and their risk modi-
cation trajectories. Consequently, this article, which establishes a foundation for
those following in this issue, aims to consider the extant literature on resilience
from an international perspective. Specically, we will dene the constructs of risk,
adversity, and resilience in order to establish a common understanding; synthesize
what international research has revealed about protective factors, with a focus on
those relevant to the provision of psychological services to children and adolescents
in schools; and provide implications for future research on this topic, highlighting
unique contributions of the subsequent articles in this special issue.
Adversity and resilience: Building a common understanding
Adversity refers to experiences that have the potential to produce undesirable out-
comes by disrupting normal functioning (Riley & Masten, 2005). Although some
types of risk factors are unalterable (e.g. family history of mental illness), adversity
represents a specic type of risk factor that an individual experiences that may or
may not be preventable or malleable. Adversity may be chronic or acute, although
exposure to multiple risks is more likely to be harmful than a single traumatic
experience (e.g. Samero, Seifer, Baldwin, & Baldwin, 1993). Despite the potential
sequelae associated with adversity, the developmental trajectories of children in
similarly adverse situations actually emerge as quite heterogeneouswith some
children demonstrating more resilience to these circumstances than others.
Although there is no singular, universally agreed upon denition of resilience,
Masten (1999, p. 283) proposed that resilience refers to . . . patterns of desirable
behavior in situations where adaptive functioning or development have been or
currently are signicantly threatened by adverse experiences or rearing conditions.
Resilience is not directly measured, but is inferred from the presence of signicant
Noltemeyer and Bush 475
stress or adversity that has the potential to threaten healthy development coupled
with the observation of positive outcomes (Riley & Masten, 1995; Rutter, 2012).
Rather than a singular personality trait inherent within an individual, resilience
refers to a process or phenomenon (Luthar & Zelazo, 2003) that may be inuenced
by characteristics of individuals as well as the myriad of social systems and envir-
onments within which they exist. Although this article focuses primarily on foster-
ing child and youth resilience, researchers have also considered the resilience of
larger social systems, including families (Walsh, 2012), classrooms (Doll, Zucker, &
Brehm, 2004), and communities (Ungar, 2011).
Risk and protective factors are important considerations within the resilience
literature. However, whereas the isolated study of risk and protection begins with a
focus on variables before considering outcomes, resilience research is undergirded
by an interest in the widely disparate variation in outcomes and only later considers
risk and protection (Rutter, 2006). There is no unitary agreement regarding the
pathways to resilience involving risk and protective factors. However, many
researchers believe that resilience emerges within an interactive model where the
relationship between a risk factor and an outcome is weakened by the presence of
one or more protective factors (Fraser, Kirby, & Smokowski, 2004). This eect
may occur either because the protective factor (a) buers the risk factor, (b) inter-
rupts a risk chain through which risk factors exert their eects, or (c) prevents the
occurrence of the risk factor altogether (Fraser et al., 2004). Others have also
considered the possibility of steeling eects whereby some outcomes may actually
be enhanced by certain forms of adversity or risk (see Rutter, 2012) although no
certain conclusions have been drawn given the emerging nature of research on
steeling eects.
Given the complex interaction between risk and protective factors, which
may vary depending on setting-specic norms, it is not surprising that culture
and context inuence positive or maladaptive adjustment. Findings from qualita-
tive research conducted in 11 countries support this assertion (e.g. Ungar, 2008),
leading many resilience researchers to suggest that cultural beliefs play a signi-
cant role in shaping how people perceive, interpret, and approach adversity in their
lives (Lee, Kwong, Cheung, Ungar, & Cheung, 2010). Ungar (2008) proposed
a denition of resilience that more fully emphasizes the cultural inuence on
resilience, stating, In the context of exposure to signicant adversity . . . resilience
is both the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to health-sustaining resour-
ces . . . and a condition of the individuals family, community and culture to
provide these health resources and experiences in culturally meaningful ways
(p. 225).
Considering the contextual nature of resilience, the need for international
research assuming an ecological perspective emerges as a critical part of better
understanding resilience and how to intervene to improve the outcomes of children
and adolescents experiencing risk. Although there have been investigations into the
experience of adversity and resilience in many countries worldwide, it is important
to synthesize the ndings from these and other investigations to better understand
476 School Psychology International 34(5)
the mechanisms by which children experience resilience in dierent cultures,
which undergird the development of eective and culturally responsive
interventions.
Protective factors at different levels
When viewed through the ecological framework just described, it becomes clear
that resilience is the product of a rich interplay between risk factors and protective
factors. Although preventing or minimizing risk factors should always be a goal,
protective factors can foster resilience and mitigate some of the potentially negative
inuence of the risk factors when they are unavoidably present. In this section, we
will summarize pertinent research ndings on protective factors. The existence of a
universal protective factor for all children has been questioned; rather, protective
factors likely vary based on the child, risk factor, and outcome of interest
(Samero, Gutman, & Peck, 2003). Despite this context-dependent nature of pro-
tection, we contend that much can be learned from a better understanding of
protective factors across children, risk factors, and outcomes. Considering the eco-
logical framework, we will organize this discussion around dierent social systems
that inuence individuals and are relevant for the provision of school-based psy-
chological services.
Individual factors
Individual children and adolescents may possess characteristics that facilitate posi-
tive adaptation in the presence of risk factors. Some of these protective factors,
such as neural plasticity (e.g. Cicchetti & Blender, 2006) have biological origins.
Cichetti and Blender (2006) have suggested that adversity can damage neural sub-
strates, but certain individuals possess an innate capacity (i.e. plasticity) to recover
from these neural insults better than others. Hormonal factors also may play an
important role; for example, the adrenal steroid hormones cortisol and DHEA
have been found to be associated with resilience in maltreated children (e.g.
Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2009). Cichetti and Rogosch (2009) also found evidence
that genetic variation may moderate the relationship between adversity and out-
comes in maltreated adolescents.
Beyond these less malleable individual characteristics, there are also individu-
ally-held beliefs and resources that can help children be more resilient. For exam-
ple, Lee et al. (2010) found that, in a sample of 843 fourth grade students in Hong
Kong, childrens resilience-related beliefs signicantly predicted positive develop-
ment in the face of adversity. In a qualitative study of 20 South African street
youth, Malindi and Theron (2010) identied personal resources such as humor,
assertiveness, agency, and social self-regulation as being instrumental in resilient
youth. Other factors that may relate to positive outcomes under adverse circum-
stances include a strong work ethic and persistence (Morales, 2010); resourceful-
ness (e.g. Leung & He, 2010); social skills (e.g. Boyd & Waanders, 2012); high
Noltemeyer and Bush 477
internal locus of control (e.g. Bolger & Patterson, 2003); religiosity (e.g. McKnight
& Loper, 2002); and emotion regulation (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2009).
Childrens developmental and cognitive competence also has been associated
with resilience, although the ndings are somewhat inconsistent. In some studies,
intelligence has been shown to dierentiate resilient children from their peers. For
example, Flouri, Tzavidis, & Kallis (2010) found that, in a sample of over 4,000 3-
year-old UK children, non-verbal abilities moderated the eect of risk factors on
emotional symptoms and conduct problems. Developmental milestones also mod-
erated risk, although only for conduct problems. Other research, however, has
failed to uncover the unique protection intelligence oers in the face of adversity.
Samero et al. (2003) found that although verbal intelligence inuenced school
grades, children exposed to multiple risk factors who had high IQs actually had
lower school grades than children not exposed to the risk factors who had low IQs.
Family factors
Many aspects of the family environment have been identied to serve as protective
factors for children and youth facing adversity. In a well-functioning family, par-
ents are in control and in a hierarchy above their children; have good communi-
cation and try to prevent major issues in their relationship from impacting their
parenting sub-system; and create a sense of family cohesion and adaptability. That
is, the family system is structured and well enough dened to allow regular sup-
portive and healthy interaction within and outside of the family unit, but yet ex-
ible enough to allow adaption when change is needed to maintain healthy
functioning (Bush, Bohon & Kim, 2009; Olsen, 2011). These same family system
concepts apply across cultures, but the tolerance for individuality and expectations
for connectedness are likely to vary across cultures depending on values and the
overall social context (Peterson & Bush, 2012). However, family cohesion and
adaptability, eective parental communication skills, stable marital/couple rela-
tionships, and responsive, nurturant, and consistent rm parenting practices gen-
erally serve as protective factors for children and adolescents across diverse cultures
(Bush & Peterson, 2012; Peterson & Bush, 2012). The remainder of this section will
focus on process variables (i.e. parenting behaviors) that school personnel working
with children are likely to have access to and a potential to change.
Parental responsiveness and rm behavioral control appear to serve as universal
protection, fostering various positive outcomes among diverse groups, as well as
protecting against negative outcomes. More specically, parental responsiveness or
supportive behaviors refer to parental practices that convey support, warmth, and
nurturance, and play a key role in fostering secure attachment relationships, which
serves as a key protective factor for children throughout their lives (Bowlby, 1988;
Bush & Peterson, 2012). Other positive outcomes from parental responsiveness
include academic achievement and self-esteem. For example, parental responsive-
ness/support has been found to foster academic achievement across cultures,
including the USA (Steinberg, 2001); China (Leung, & He, 2010); and Chile
478 School Psychology International 34(5)
(Bush & Peterson, in press). Parental responsiveness has also been found to serve as
a protective factor for children experiencing adversity, such as fostering Chinese
students resourcefulness in the context of academic stress, which in turn moder-
ated academic stress and student grades (Leung & He, 2010). Similarly, parental
responsiveness/support has been found to be negatively related to problem behav-
ior among adolescents in China (Li, Martin, Armstrong, & Walker, 2011) and
depression and substance abuse in Australia (Bond, Toumbourou, Thomas,
Catalano, & Patton, 2005). Among youth facing adversity, parental responsiveness
has been reported to serve as a protective factor with samples in China (Li et al.,
2011) for those at risk for family conict; and for low-income Mexican youth at
risk for substance abuse (Becerra & Castillo, 2011).
Parental monitoring is a practice reecting rm and consistent behavioral con-
trol related to parents tracking of their childrens activities (Bush & Peterson,
2012). Parental monitoring has been shown to be particularly relevant to guard
against drift into negative behavior patterns, including conduct problems, delin-
quency, and substance abuse across diverse cultural groups. For example, parental
monitoring has been found to serve as general protection against substance abuse
with youth in Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA (Vazsonyi,
Hibbert & Blake Snider, 2003); and aggressive behaviors in Chile (Bares, Delva,
Grogan-Kaylor & Andrade, 2011). Among youth facing adversity, parental moni-
toring has been found to serve as a protective factor for substance abuse in a low-
income sample in Mexico (Becerra & Castillo, 2011) and juvenile oending for
victimized children in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Nash, Mujanovic, & Winfree,
2011). Monitoring increases parental knowledge and allows parents to understand
the contexts in which their children exist and adjust their parenting accordingly.
Parental monitoring has also been suggested to convey care and concern to chil-
dren and adolescents in collectivistic cultures such as Mexico (Bush, Supple, &
Lash, 2004; Hill, Bush, & Roosa, 2003) and foster academic achievement and
self-esteem across diverse cultures, including the USA, China, Chile, and Mexico
(Bush & Peterson, 2012; Bush & Peterson, in press; Bush, Peterson, Cobas, &
Supple 2002; Bush et al., 2004; Peterson & Bush, 2012).
School factors
Although the average number of years of school attendance varies markedly
between developing countries and industrially advanced countries (Barrow &
Lee, 2000), most children worldwide do attend some amount of school, making
schools a fertile ground for promoting resilience. Relationships developed within
school settings, for example, can inuence the capacity of children to thrive in
adverse situations. Peer support has been demonstrated to buer states of risk
and adversity in, among many other populations, immigrant youth in Hong
Kong (Wong, 2008) and students living in poverty in Turkey (Ali Gizir &
Aydin, 2009). However, some research suggests that an interaction between peer
support and gender, which requires further elucidation, may exist. For example,
Noltemeyer and Bush 479
Powers, Ressler, and Bradley (2009) found that friend-support protected against
depression for maltreated children, but only in females; in contrast, Tanigawa,
Furlong, Felix, and Sharkey (2011) found that perceived social support from a
friend buered the expression of depressive symptoms in children victimized by
peers, but only in males.
Caring teacher-student relationships also have been linked with positive adjust-
ment for children across grades, gender, and types of outcomes, and have been
documented to play a particularly strong protective role for children with devel-
opmental vulnerabilities (e.g. Baker, 2006). As merely a few examples of the per-
vasiveness of these ndings internationally, perceptions of teacher fairness also
have been found to protect at-risk adolescents in the USA from delinquent behav-
ior (McKnight & Loper, 2002); school caring relationships and high expectations
have been associated with academic resilience in a sample of Turkish students living
in poverty (Ali Gizir & Aydin, 2009); and positive teacher-student relationships
have been found to attenuate risk for marijuana use in high-risk Central American
adolescents (Kliewer & Murrelle, 2007). This impact of caring teacher-student rela-
tionships is complemented by the actions of related service personnel such as school
principals, counselors, and psychologists (Theron & Engelbrecht, 2012).
In addition to these relational considerations, the instructional and intervention
supports provided by educators also serve an important role. For example,
Wolmer, Hamiel, & Laor (2011) found that a teacher-based, universal intervention
implemented preventatively with Israeli youth resulted in signicantly fewer symp-
toms of posttraumatic stress disorder compared to a control condition. Regarding
the more general instructional and extracurricular oerings in schools, the quality
of curricular provisions in preschools has been found to moderate the eects of
child and familial risks (Hall et al., 2009), and engaging in challenging extracurri-
cular activities has been shown to serve as a protective factor for high-risk youth
(Schmidt, 2003). Finally, research suggests that authoritative teachers and schools
(i.e. those with explicitly dened and warm expectations and discipline) may buer
the risks associated with parental divorce, and this eect is particularly strong for
male students and those experiencing multiple risks (Hetherington, 1989).
Together, these and other studies reveal specic programmatic and environmental
changes that may foster student resilience.
Community and cultural factors
Communities can serve as protective factors for youth and families to the extent
that individuals and families are able to access resources they need to support
themselves and/or their children and families (Ungar, 2011). Thus community
resilience refers to the extent to which various forms of capital are available to
residents. That is, children will fare better in families that live in communities with
access to human capital (e.g. providing parents opportunities to work, and gain
knowledge/education), social capital (e.g. support networks, sense of ecacy/com-
munity), natural capital (e.g. water, land), physical capital (e.g. adequate/safe
480 School Psychology International 34(5)
housing, transportation, energy), and nancial capital (Bush & Peterson, 2012;
Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Obrist, Pfeier, & Henley, 2010).
One operationalization of social capital is the extent to which one has a sense of
community. That is, feelings of belonging, identity, and faith that community
members will help meet the needs of their community group (McMillan &
Chavis, 1986). Community group can refer to any social group one identies
with and shares values/beliefs, including ethnic/cultural group, school, or neigh-
borhood. In an ethnically diverse US sample, Mayberry, Espelage, and Koenig
(2009) found that adolescents positive sense of community served as general pro-
tection within a diverse community sample as it moderated the relationship
between peer and parental inuence on adolescent substance use. A related
aspect at the community level is community social organization, which refers to
the social relationships among neighborhood/community members and organiza-
tions and the ability to establish and maintain safe and supportive environments.
Within a culturally diverse US sample, Cantillon (2006) found that higher levels of
community social organization served as general protection, leading to lower levels
of neighborhood delinquency rates and higher levels of prosocial activity within a
midwestern city. Modeling and encouragement of prosocial behavior in a commu-
nity serves as a protective factor for youth. For example, community
opportunities and rewards for prosocial involvement related to lower levels of
substance use and depressive symptoms within a representative Australian
sample (Bond et al., 2005).
Summary and future directions
Given the considerable risk factors facing children and adolescents worldwide,
school and educational psychologists have a shared imperative to comprehensively
understand adversity, resilience, and protection. Unfortunately, relatively little
attention has been devoted to these concepts within the school/educational psych-
ology literature (see Toland & Carrigan, 2011, p.96). In this article, we dened and
described concepts central to the resilience discourse, also synthesizing key inter-
national research ndings on protective mechanisms across four ecological levels
(i.e. individual, family, school, and community/cultural). Figure 1 captures some of
the salient themes revealed throughout this analysis.
Although some general trends in resilience and protection have been reviewed,
resilience is also strongly inuenced by culture and context. That is, a protective
factor may not serve the same role across settings (see Theron & Donald, 2013),
and resilience has been studied mostly in Western samples (see Ungar, 2008).
Considering these factors, it becomes important to advance a research agenda
that recognizes the unique protective inuences within and across cultural contexts.
This special issue includes research that extends the knowledge of such processes
across the multiple levels described in this article (i.e. individual, family,
school, and community/cultural). Martin (2013) investigated individual and
Noltemeyer and Bush 481
school factors in his examination of the relationship between academic buoyancy,
academic resilience, and negative outcomes in Australian youth. Zhang, Li, Gong,
& Ungar (2013) not only considered the inuence of individual and school factors,
but also the roles of family and peer factorsand their interactionsin protecting
at-risk adolescents from depression. Ungar and Liebenberg (2013) also considered
the interaction between several ecological levels, examining how cultural and com-
munity factors interact with individual factors to predict school participation in
multiply risked youth. Finally, Theron (2013) similarly recognized the contribution
of multiple levels of ecology on resilience in her research on resilient South African
university students, which revealed the important role of teachers, families,
and cultural systems. Each of these studies contributes to the burgeoning under-
standing of resilience processes in non-Western populations, and should serve as an
impetus for further work examining the unique pathways to resilience in dierent
settings.
Individual
Neural plascity, hormones,
genec variaon
Resilience beliefs, humor,
asserveness, self-regulaon,
work ethic, resourcefulness,
internal locus of control,
religiosity
Developmental and cognive
competence
Family
Family cohesion and
adaptability
Parental responsiveness and
support
Parental monitoring
Firm parental behavioral
control
School
Access to educaonal
resources
School engagement
Peer support
Posive teacher-student
relaonships
High quality curriculum
Intervenon eorts
Community/Cultural
Access to human capital, social
capital, physical capital, and
nancial capital
Feelings of belonging, identy,
and faith that community
members will help meet
community needs
Social organizaon of the
community, with a safe and
supporve environment
Figure 1. Key protective factors emerging from a review of international research.
482 School Psychology International 34(5)
Note
We would like to acknowledge Amy J. Wilkins, Graduate Assistant at Miami University, for
her assistance with formatting, editing, and preparing the manuscript for submission.
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Author biographies
Amity L. Noltemeyer, PhD, NCSP, is an Assistant Professor in School Psychology
at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA. Dr Noltemeyer has published and
presented on topics including educational disproportionality, response to interven-
tion, and resilience. Dr Noltemeyer also serves as a co-PI of a program evaluation
project, coordinates the university school psychology internship program, and
serves as President Elect of the Ohio School Psychologists Association.
Kevin R. Bush, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Family Studies and Associate
Dean in the School of Education, Health and Society at Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio. His research interests focus on child and adolescent development
in the contexts of family, school, community, and culture. He has conducted stu-
dies with diverse US (Appalachian, African American, Asian American, and
Latinos) and international (e.g. Chinese, Chilean, Mexican, South Korean, and
Russian) samples of children, adolescents and parents.
Noltemeyer and Bush 487