Analyzing Spanish adolescents through the lens of the Resilience Portfolio Model

Abstract

Some negative experiences during adolescence can jeopardize psychological adaptation throughout life. Therefore, promoting adolescent resilience is an important goal to prevent symptoms of psychopathology. The Resilience Portfolio Model puts forward a framework to understand how different strengths (classified into three dimensions: regulatory, interpersonal, and meaning making) can help people adapt and even thrive. Through this lens, the current study examines post-traumatic growth after victimization and other adversities. Participants were 407 Spanish adolescents aged from 14 to 18 (79.6% indicated some exposure to adversity). After testing their psychometric adequacy, different measures of strengths, well-being, victimization, and adversity were included in a survey for analyzing their association with post-traumatic growth. Density (more intensity of strengths), diversity (more variety of strengths), and all strength dimensions discriminated between those who scored high or low in post-traumatic growth. While endurance, meaning making density, and diversity of strengths predicted higher posttraumatic growth, a higher emotional regulation related to lower post-traumatic growth. The model offers a guide for analyzing and promoting resilience in adolescent populations, and a series of short tools for evaluating a broad set of strengths.