Validation and Factor Analysis of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure for Indigenous Australian Boarding School Students

Abstract

Introduction: Resilience is a strengths-based construct that is useful for understanding differences in health and wellbeing among youth. There are a range of validated survey instruments available to measure resilience for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter respectfully Indigenous1) youth. However, standard international instruments should only be used if they have been subjected to a rigorous cross-cultural adaptation process and psychometric evaluation in the target population to ensure their validity. The aim of the study was to validate an adapted Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28) within a sample of Indigenous Australian boarding school students.Method: The CYRM-28, augmented with an additional 11 site specific items was administered to a purposive sample of Australian Indigenous boarding school students (n = 233) as part of the broader T4S survey instrument that captures demographic information and measures resilience, psychological distress and risk, and service usage. Confirmatory factor analysis was undertaken to verify the relationship between the observed variables with the theoretical constructs of the CYRM-28 and previous findings on the factor structure. Cronbach alpha was also calculated to assess the internal consistency of the CYRM-28 within this sample.Results: Survey data were not a good fit for any previously identified models of the CYRM-28, although the inclusion of a site-specific variable improved the overall fit statistics. Two separate scales were confirmed that capture the sources and expressions of resilience for Indigenous Australian boarding school students. This structure is different to previous findings in relation to the CYRM-28, but consistent with conceptualizations of resilience as a dynamic process.Conclusions: The findings are useful in guiding the future use of the CYRM-28 instrument, explorations of Indigenous youth resilience, and for services working with Indigenous youth in out of home care situations. They highlight contextual differences in the measurement of resilience and the importance of validating standard instruments that have been subjected to rigorous cross-cultural adaptation processes. The two scales offer practical guidance to human services working with Indigenous youth on strategies to build and monitor resilience in Indigenous Australian youth and contribute to the emergent understanding of their resilience.

Validating a Child Youth Resilience Measurement (CYRM-28) for Adolescents Living With HIV (ALHIV) in Urban Malawi

“…In particular, ALHIV perceptions differed on the individual peer support and education supports. This is consistent with previous studies that argue that across sub-populations, there are common resilience elements, but the way they are grouped is different ( Langham et al, 2018 ; Van Breda, 2018 ). Overall, our study demonstrates construct validity (dependent on measurement scores, (1) content; (2) item responses; and (3) relations to other dimensions, e.g., convergent, discriminant, concurrent ( Ungar and Liebenberg, 2011 ; Pritzker and Minter, 2014 ), informs gaps in HIV and resilience research ( van Rensburg et al, 2015 ; de Araújo et al, 2017 ), and highlights the need to be mindful of the role of peers, community, and educational support in the lives of ALHIV.…”

“…However, in our study, some adolescents might have underreported their access to educational support as part of the need for incentives for their education. Low factor loadings were also recorded in previous studies in South Africa, Canada, and Australia on items 1 and 28, which provides more evidence on some of the problematic items that make up the CYRM-28 ( Ungar, 2016 ; Govender et al, 2017 ; Langham et al, 2018 ). Our study highlights caregiving support and spiritual and cultural supports as key to informing resilience among ALHIV attending ART clinics in Malawi.…”

“…The reasons EFA was used in this study include (1) to ascertain the factor structure of the resilience measurement scale, inclusive of all sub-scales (individual, caregiver, and context) to ensure that all items in the scale measured resilience as an underlying construct ( Langham et al, 2018 ) and (2) because our questionnaire items were not normally distributed but were skewed. The CFA using structural equation modeling (SEM) in Stata 14.2 assessed the relationships and inter-relationships between different latent factors of the CYRM-28 of observed and measured behaviors ( Acock, 2013 ).…”

“…There have been several attempts globally to validate the CYRM-28, including in Canada ( Liebenberg et al, 2012 ), New Zealand ( Sanders et al, 2017 ), Australia ( Langham et al, 2018 ), and South Africa ( van Rensburg et al, 2019 ). In the global north, there is variability in the factor structure correlations and relationships that measure resilience among youths ( Pritzker and Minter, 2014 ).…”

Integrating Healthcare Services for Indigenous Australian Students at Boarding Schools: A Mixed-Methods Sequential Explanatory Study

“…This study focuses on the health, healthcare service use and satisfaction of a cohort of Indigenous remote-dwelling north Queensland students who are required to attend boarding schools for secondary education because there is limited or no secondary schooling available in their home communities. It forms part of a broader ecological study to support and enhance the resilience of these students; other papers have provided a study protocol [22], descriptions of the survey development and validation [23,24], description of staff capacity development [25] and student survey baseline results [26]. Anecdotal evidence (2016) attained through this broader resilience study suggested that some students had untreated health conditions upon arrival at or during boarding school education, and/or experienced patchy care between remote home community and schoolbased healthcare services.…”