Resilience and Impairment: An Exploratory Study of Resilience Factors and Situational Impairment

The purpose of this study was to begin to examine the relationships between social emotional factors related to resilience as measured by the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) and the degree of impairment as reflected in problem behaviors reported by parents according to the Home Situations Questionnaire (HSQ). A second goal was to study the relationships between impairment as measured by the HSQ with intelligence as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) and the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS). The participants were 49 children (76% males; all White; aged 6-14 years; mean = 8.9, SD = 2.0), evenly distributed among those diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) Inattentive, ADHD Combined type, ADHD Not Otherwise Specified, learning disabilities, mild mental retardation, depression, and combined depression and ADHD. The DESSA T score was 38.6, suggesting that this group of referred children were low in social-emotional protective factors. The WISC-IV Full Scale IQ was 96.8, with scores ranging from 87.7 on Processing Speed to 102.5 on Verbal Comprehension, and the CAS Full Scale was 94.5, with scores ranging from 90.9 in Planning to 100.4 in both Simultaneous and Successive processing abilities. Seven of the eight DESSA scales correlated significantly with the HSQ, as did the Social-Emotional Composite (r = -.53); lower social-emotional competence scores DESSA were associated with higher degrees of impairment in home situations. In contrast, none of the WISC-IV or CAS scales were significantly correlated with the HSQ.