Measuring Resilience in Black Families

Authors

• Destiny Shanell Kelly, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Advisor(s)

Sylvie Mrug

Committee Member(s)

Olivio Clay
Robin Ennis

School

College of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Thesis

Department (new version)

Psychology

Date of Award

9-9-2024

Abstract

Black families play a unique role in navigating risk and adversity, operating as a source of various protective factors to combat challenges faced. Given the historical and current role that racism plays in the everyday lives of Black individuals, culturally specific protective mechanisms have manifested as a defense for these encounters. Many of these protective factors are instilled at the family level, helping all family members maintain healthy functioning or be resilient, such as social support, ethnic-racial socialization, and racial identity. However, current measures of family resilience do not incorporate these culturally relevant protective mechanisms into the measures, preventing Black families from acknowledging the processes and mechanisms they rely on to build and maintain resilience. To bridge this gap, this study involves developing a draft of items and assessing content validity for the Resilience in Black Families Scale. Focus groups (n=8), along with a literature review of family resilience and protective factors relevant to Black youth and adults, were used to inform a preliminary model of resilience in Black families and generate survey items. To assess whether these items measured resilience in Black families, expert judges (n=5) and cognitive interviewees (n=10) were administered draft questions to assess whether the items were clear and representative of resilience in Black families. A final draft of questions for the Resilience in Black Families Scale ensued from this qualitative study, future studies will establish the scale’s psychometric properties. This scale can then be used to better assess and enhance resilience in Black families.

ProQuest ID

https://proquest.com/docview/3101847972