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Description
My aim was to discover if Americans ranging from adolescence to early adulthood have become less resilient between 1963 and the present. There is an association between lower levels of psychological resiliency, and overall reports of negative mental health status. Mental health concerns have increased over time; thus, I predicted that levels of psychological resiliency may share the same overall trajectory. Following a preliminary search, six scales used to measure psychological resiliency were determined to be used in this study. Means were collected from relevant studies and dissertations that report means on any of these scales. 27 studies were included in this analysis. The search criteria included studies that contain citations for the selected scales. Studies included met the following criteria: a) participants are attending middle school, high school, or a four-year college or university; b) participants are attending school in the United States; c) means were reported for unselected groups of students, not those chosen for scoring high or low on resilience or another measure, those with a specific diagnosis, “at-risk,” maladjusted, clients at a counseling center, etc. Two analyses were performed in order to conduct this cross-temporal meta-analysis. First, a correlation between means and the year, weighted by sample size, was performed within each measure. Second, means were Z-scored within measures and then, combining the results across all measures, the correlation across year was examined. Using SPSS, the collected means were converted to item means and standardized (z-scored). A regression was computed across year with the z-scored means as the dependent variable, and then another regression was run with the data file split by scale. The results were found to be non-significant across all scales used due to an insufficient amount of data points. However, there was a significant decrease in resiliency levels for the Dispositional Resiliency scale after splitting the data by scale (r = -0.79, p = .004). Further research including more data points is necessary to make any conclusions from this data at this time.
