Ciera Lipps

Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Barton, Michelle

Keywords

Personality, Children, Foster Care, Psychological Resilience, Florida

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Psychological resilience is considered a combination of internal and external factors that lead to positive psychological development despite facing adversities. Personality factors and the number of adversities faced by an individual have been examined in relation to resilience in children in the general population, however, how these factors relate specifically to children who are in foster care has not been examined. Based on previous findings with adults, it was hypothesized that extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness would be positively correlated with resilience in children in foster care, while neuroticism would be negatively correlated with resilience in these children. It was also hypothesized that the number of adversities these children faced would be negatively correlated with their resilience. Thirty-eight children in foster care group homes of a Southwest Florida county were administered the Connor- Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Big Five Inventory-Revised for children. The case managers of the children were asked to complete the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire about each child. Resilience was found to be significantly positively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, yet negatively correlated with neuroticism. Number of adverse childhood experiences was not significantly correlated with resilience. These results are discussed in terms of understanding how personality relates to resilience which in turn may allow for foster care programs to target certain children for intervention to promote psychological resilience.

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