A Longitudinal Study of Resilience and Students' Academic Performance and Life Satisfaction

• In Event: 65.071 - Measuring Social and Emotional Learning Skills Using the Mission Skills Assessment

Abstract

Research has shown the importance of resilience by demonstrating its significant relationship with students’ academic achievement and subjective well-being. However, few studies distinguish among different approaches to measuring resilience. There is also little evidence from longitudinal studies involving assessing resilience in multiple ways. The current study overcomes those limitations and provides a clearer understanding of the predictive power of resilience. Three research questions are addressed: (1) What are the psychometric properties of the Mission Skills Assessment's resilience scale? (2) how does resilience change over time? and (3) what is the relationship between respondent’s resilience and their academic achievement and life satisfaction?

Researchers define resilience differently (e.g., Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Wagnild & Young, 1993; Sapienza & Mastern, 2011), but these definitions can often be placed into one of four interrelated aspects of resilience —- trait, process, coping, and outcome.

Resilience scales usually contain items covering all four aspects. Using exploratory and confirmatory bi-factor analysis, the author successfully extracted an omnibus resilience dimension from items in the resilience scale, while statistically removing the undesirable variance attributable to the specific aspects, or variance associated with wording effects. Using factor scores from the bi-factor analysis, the author applied hierarchical linear models with and without time-varying resilience predictors to further examine the predictive validity of different resilience factors on academic achievement and life satisfaction.

Data used for the current study comes from the Mission Skills Assessment (MSA) project. MSA is funded by the Independent School Data Exchange (INDEX). The Center for Academic and Workplace Readiness and Success (CAWRS) at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) supported multiple phases of the study. Three waves of data from 22 schools and 3,882 contributed to the present study. Resilience was measured using students’ self-ratings, teacher ratings, and situational judgment tests (SJT).

All three resilience measures experienced significant changes across time. Self-rated resilience was significantly related to life satisfaction, but not to academic achievement. Teacher rated resilience significantly predicted standardized test scores and GPA. SJT scores were also significantly related to GPA, although the relationship was weaker.

The present study distinguishes traits that are related to or influence resilience from traits that more directly measure resilience. In addition, this study evaluated multiple ways of measuring resilience across time, which provides insight into the relative importance of resilience measures and the longitudinal effects of resilience. No previous studies have been so comprehensive.

Author

• Rui Yang, American Institutes for Research