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INSTRUMENTS MEASURING RESILIENCY
Social workers strive to make informed decisions about the interventions they implement. These decisions should be driven by what the research data say. As a result, social workers have been called to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions they implement. A common way to evaluate interventions is to use a single-subject design. This involves monitoring an outcome for an intervention implemented for one client. After a social worker works with the client to determine the outcome to be measured, the following steps to the evaluation might look like this:
Administer the instrument before the intervention is implemented
Implement the intervention
Administer the same instrument, after a specified time period
Monitor to determine if there have been any changes in the outcome
In this Discussion, you use the lens of resiliency theory when reflecting on a case from your fieldwork, and then you consider how to measure the effectiveness of a possible intervention.
TO PREPARE
Read this article listed in the Learning Resources:
Smith-Osborne, A., & Whitehill Bolton K. (2013). Assessing resilience: A review of measures across the life course. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 10(2), 111–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/15433714.2011.597305
If you don’t have field experience that applies to this Discussion, you can apply other social work experience, including internships or professional experience, or apply a case study from this course. Contact your Instructor if you need clarification for what could apply for the Discussion.
ANSWER THESE
Post a reponse to the following:
Reflect on your fieldwork or other professional experience, and identify a case where it would have been beneficial to employ resiliency theory. Describe the case in 2 sentences.
Describe the presenting problem in one concise sentence.
Describe an intervention you would implement to promote resiliency.
Identify an instrument from the Smith-Osborne and Whitehill Bolton’s article that would be appropriate when employing a single-subject design to evaluate how effective the intervention is in increasing the client’s level of resiliency.
Explain why you selected the instrument.
In other words, why would the instrument be appropriate? (Consider the age of the client and for whom the instrument was designed, how feasible it would be to administer the instrument such as cost, time to administer it, etc.).
Life Span and Resiliency Theory: A Critical Review | Advances in Social Work (iupui.edu)
This is the article
My fieldwork has always been with elderly people with disabilities. I also have worked at an agency where people were suffering from mental health mostly with the elderly population.
In this Discussion, you use the lens of resiliency theory when reflecting on a case from your fieldwork, and then you consider how to measure the effectiveness of a possible intervention.
Requirements: Fully Answer Times New Roman Size 12 Font Double-Spaced APA Format Excluding the Title and Reference Pages
Please provide an answer that is 100% original and do not copy the answer to this question from any other website since I am already well aware of this. I will be sure to check this.
Please be sure that the answer comes up with way less than 18% on Studypool’s internal plagiarism checker since anything above this is not acceptable according to Studypool’s standards. I will not accept answers that are above this standard.
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Please be sure to carefully follow the instructions.
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Please be sure to include at least one in-text citation.
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152
Life Span and Resiliency Theory: A Critical Review
Alexa Smith-Osborne
Abstract: Theories of life span development describe human growth and change
over the life cycle (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2006). Major types of developmental theories include biological, psychodynamic, behavioral, and social learning, cognitive, moral, and spiritual, and those influenced by systems, empowerment, and conflict theory. Life span development theories commonly focus on ontogenesis and sequential mastery of skills, tasks, and abilities. Social work scholars
have pointed out that a limitation of life span and other developmental theory is
lack of attention to resilience (Greene, 2007; Robbins et al., 1998).
The concept of resilience was developed to “describe relative resistance to psychosocial risk experiences” (Rutter, 1999b, p. 119). Longitudinal studies focused on
typical and atypical child development informed theory formulation in developmental psychopathology (Garmezy & Rutter, 1983; Luthar, Cichetti, & Becker, 2000)
and in an evolving resilience model (Richardson, 2002; Werner & Smith, 1992).
Research on resilience has found a positive relationship between a number of individual traits and contextual variables and resistance to a variety of risk factors
among children and adolescents. More recently, resilience research has examined
the operation of these same factors in the young adult, middle-age, and elder life
stages.
This article examines the historical and conceptual progression of the two developmental theories—life span and resiliency—and discusses their application to
social work practice and education in human behavior in the social environment.
Keywords: Life span, resiliency theory, life cycle, critique
T
heories of life span development describe human growth and change over
the life cycle (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2006). Major types of developmental theories include biological, psychodynamic, behavioral and social
learning, cognitive, moral and spiritual, and those influenced by systems,
empowerment, and conflict theory. Life span development theories commonly
focus on ontogenesis and the sequential mastery of skills, tasks, and abilities.
Alexa Smith-Osborne, Ph.D. is assistant professor at The University of Texas at Arlington School of Social
Work, Arlington, TX 76019.
Copyright© 2007 Advances in Social Work Vol. 8 No. 1 (Spring 2007) 152-168.
Indiana University School of Social Work.
Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY
153
The major theories address the entire life cycle, from prenatal or birth to death,
but they often focus in-depth on particular age periods, referred to as life stages.
Some theorists within this field have focused more exclusively on a single life
stage (Vaillant, 1993) or on a macro-level view of developmental traits that characterize an age cohort with defined ranges of birth dates or historical/cultural
periods of primary influence on development (Strauss & Howe, 1991). For purposes of this paper, only a segment of life span theory can be addressed.
Therefore, this paper focuses on personality and psychosocial theories, which
form the historical foundation for much of the other life span theories.
Resiliency theory is an emerging theoretical perspective that has been developed within developmental psychopathology and ecosystems perspectives and is
influenced by stress and coping theories. Although this theory has not been
explicitly developed as an outgrowth of life span theory, it is developmental in
focus, and theory-driven research typically examines a specific chronological life
stage as a starting point. This theoretical framework addresses health development of at-risk populations, and overcoming stress and adversity to achieve functional outcomes either during a life stage, a specific trajectory (e.g., educational
or deviancy), or throughout the life span. The initial focus of theory development
has been on childhood and adolescence and associations of traits and events at
these life stages with outcomes later in life. Some recent research in this field has
applied resiliency constructs to adults at risk (Daining, 2005; Smith, 2003; SmithOsborne, 2006).
Historical Context
The notion that life can be understood as a series of significant and sequential
stages can be traced to the earliest human civilizations and has appeared consistently in literary, religious, and philosophical writings throughout history
(Erikson, 1968; Robbins et al., 1998). The scientific approach to human development throughout the life cycle was stimulated by the emergence of evolutionary
theory at the turn of the century (Darwin, 1872), which led to the development of
biologically focused maturational and psychosexual perspectives, such as those
of G. Stanley Hall in 1904, Sigmund Freud in 1905, and Arnold Gesell in 1925.
These seminal theories challenged the Victorian (and earlier) conception of children as little adults, and childhood as a time of relative stability, while the children were simply waiting to grow physically (Colby, 1970; Karl, 1964).
These theories also established the conceptualization of human development as
occurring in a series of essentially stable stages, with periods of instability during
transitions between stages and the mastery of stage-specific skills or conflicts as
the foundation for progress to the next stage (Hoffman, Paris, Hall, & Schell, 1988).
Freudian theory came to dominate much of human development theory and
clinical practice in the early 20th century, with several of Freud’s students, notably
Jung and Erikson, expanding on his concepts on the basis of their own clinical
and cross-cultural experiences. These amplifications of Freudian theory occurred
against the backdrop of the rise of fascism, the Holocaust, and World War II. The
originator of what is now called the life span approach to human psychological
development, Erik Erikson, had been a student of Freud’s and trained as a psy-
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choanalyst in Germany. Erickson fled Nazi Germany in 1939 to immigrate to
America, where he expanded Freud’s stages to apply to the entire life span,
emphasizing psychosocial, rather than biological drive theory.
Resiliency theory, in contrast, originated on the basis of prospective longitudinal
research on cohorts of children at risk (Garmezy, 1993; Rutter, Quinton, & Hill,
1990; Werner & Smith, 1982, 1992), rather than on the basis of individual clinicians’ observations and case studies. Such studies were informed by prevention
science (Greene, 2007) and the application of the epidemiological concepts of
immunity and resistance to disease to human development and psychopathology (Thoits, 1983). In particular, Werner and Smith’s longitudinal study of 698
infants, many of Hawaiian and Asian descent, provided a major empirical basis
for the inception of resiliency constructs and hypotheses for further testing, as
did Rutter’s work with early onset mental disorders and with institutionalized
Romanian children (e.g., Rutter, 1983; Rutter et al., 1990). Resiliency theory’s salutogenic orientation has been heavily influenced by the Hawaiian study’s focus on
those in childhood adversity who overcome the odds by the time they reach
adulthood. The initial formulation of theoretical concepts and constructs based
on this research proceeded within the developmental psychopathology framework in psychiatry (e.g., Rutter, 1987) and developmental psychology (e.g.,
Garmezy, Masten, & Tellegen, 1984) and within family stress and adjustment theory (e.g., McCubbin & Dahl, 1976; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983) in social work.
Much of the seminal research in this field was begun in the late 1950s (e.g., Werner
& Smith began their study in 1955) and initial findings were reported in the 1980s.
Thus, this early theoretical development was situated historically in the postVietnam War and the post-colonial era of globalization, and it often focused on
identifying factors in overcoming trauma and adverse events, such as warinduced family separations. Later, as social work educators and researchers gave
more attention to salutogenic, strengths-based (Saleebey, 1997) theoretical models for practice, resiliency constructs were further developed within the ecological perspective (e.g., Fraser & Galinsky, 1997; Gilgun, 1996) in social work theory,
rather than in life span theory. Social workers have continued to draw on resiliency theory constructs and empirical findings in research (e.g., Herrenkohl, Hill,
Chung, Guo, Abbott, & Hawkins, 2003) and in human behavior and practice texts
(e.g., Haight & Taylor, 2007; Johnson, 2004; Thomlison, 2007), either within the
ecological perspective (e.g., Haight & Taylor) or, more commonly, outside a specified theoretical frame of reference. Furthermore, some social workers have
explicitly identified and used resiliency theory as a theoretical framework, independent of other perspectives, for education (Greene, 2007) and research (SmithOsborne, 2005a, 2006; Ungar, 2004).
THEORETICAL CONCEPTS AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Life Span Theory
Life span theory utilizes the central concept of ontogenesis, the chronological
unfolding of human development (Gunnar & Thelen, 1989; Thelen & Smith,
1994), which includes both change in size and change in the complexity and differentiation of function (e.g., the change in motor reflexes at various stages in
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life). Some theorists include deterioration or diminishment in size and function,
particularly if the focus is on aging and the adult life cycle, as well as accretion or
augmentation (Jung, 1965; Newman & Newman, 1975; Santrock, 1989).
Erikson (1950) proposed the concept of “epigenesis” to convey that human
development unfolds from part to whole, with elements of the chronologically
appropriate ability or personality feature gradually emerging in a prescribed
sequence until the functional whole was achieved. The term has since been used
within the developmental psychopathology theoretical perspective to also apply
to the chronological unfolding over the life span of the disease process, such as
schizophrenia (e.g., Cannon, Rosso, Bearden, Sanchez, & Hadley, 1999). He saw
this emergence as occurring within an interactional and adaptive framework,
within which the individual develops through interaction and adaptation to the
immediate social environment as well as to the larger society, culture, and historical context. Thus, Erikson postulated that mutual responsiveness on the part of
both the individual and society was necessary for optimal development.
Another key life span concept associated with the work of Freud and Erikson is
the life stage. The life stage is seen as an age-related period of life characterized by
predictable features, tensions, and changes and leads into a subsequent stage.
Erikson formulated the notion of the psychosocial crisis, a period of tension and
disorganization centered on a stage-specific theme, the resolution of which was
the goal of the transition phase from one stage to the next. Freud and Erikson
conceptualized stages as prescriptive, in that their sequence was unvarying and
defined optimal mature development, was associated with specific tensions/conflicts, and was prerequisite, in that each stage must be worked through and the
associated conflicts resolved before successful transition to the next stage could
be accomplished. Freud’s and Erikson’s life stage models are presented in
Hoffman et al. (1988, pp. 30 and 32).
Erikson (1950) moved beyond Freud’s life stage constructs in proposing that ego
development in childhood is a process of identification, which he defined as
internalization of another person’s values and standards in an attempt to become
like that person or parts of that person. It was in adolescence that Erikson
observed (1968) the identity was formed through a process of:
repudiation and mutual assimilation of childhood identifications and
their absorption in a new configuration, which in turn, is dependent
on the process by which a society (often through subsocieties) identifies the young individual, recognizing him as somebody who had to
become the way he is and who, being the way he is, is taken for granted. (p. 159)
In Erikson’s theory, then, the concept of the mature ego identity as a complex
sense of self, comprising societally-defined life roles as well as aspects of personality, is crucial. The “identity crisis” in adolescence is normative and revolves
around issues of personal sameness and historical continuity, which serve as a
link between the individual and the larger society. Prolonged adolescence, in
Erikson’s schema, provides a psychosocial moratorium in which the sexually
mature individual engages in free role experimentation, sanctioned by society, in
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order to find a defined niche in society, while postponing adult sexual roles.
Erickson saw this as a second period of delay in the life cycle, with the first being
Freud’s psychosexual moratorium of the latency life stage, which permits the
young to learn the basics of society’s work situations before embarking on mature
sexual roles, such as spouse and parent. Erikson used the term identity diffusion,
and later the term identity confusion (1968), to describe the state of mild confusion commonly experienced by adolescents in the process of identity formation.
James Marcia (1980) developed this concept further to apply to adolescents who
are not in an identity crisis, because they are not committing themselves to occupational or ideological goals and are not concerned about the situation.
Based on the mature and socially acceptable ego identity, the young adult, in
Erikson’s schema, could then take up the mature sexual role in seeking a spouse
or intimate partner. In the middle adult stage, the individual was seen as transitioning to the ego strength made up of procreativity, productivity, and creativity,
such as in forming a family and mentoring future generations on a personal, societal or even global level. The last stage of life was that of ego integrity, which
involves the older adult’s acceptance of his/her own live as meaningful and
coherent, and the perspective that one has handled life’s tasks in the best way
possible under given circumstances.
Contemporary theorists have proposed expanded models, particularly in the
adolescent and adult stages. Two such models, proposed by Vaillant (1993, p. 145)
and Newman and Newman (1988, p. 45).
Erikson (1982, 1986, 1988) built on his earlier work in the last life stage, as he and
his wife reflected on their own adult development in later life, conceptualizing
aging in terms of revisitation of earlier stages of development within his Stage 8 of
Integrity vs. Despair.
Erikson and other psychodynamic theorists, such as Vaillant (1993), acknowledge developmental influences such as culture, race, and gender, but tend to view
intrapsychic and biological factors, including IQ, as being more important to
development.
Other theorists conceptualize human development as being more fluid
throughout the life span, rather than the product of invariant and chronologically sequential stages, and as being more heavily influenced by social roles
(Goffman, 1959; Neugarten, 1985), demographic variables, such as gender, race,
or socioeconomic status, culture and historical “moment,” and even the reciprocal, interactive effects of the immediate physical/social environment (Gunnar &
Thelen, 1989).
Resiliency Theory
The concept of resilience was developed to “describe relative resistance to psychosocial risk experiences” (Rutter, 1999b, p. 119). It has been further defined as
“a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000) and “the process of coping
with adversity, change, or opportunity in a manner that results in the identification, fortification, and enrichment of resilient qualities or protective factors”
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157
(Richardson, 2002, p. 308). Research on stress reactions and recovery from stress,
with implications for education, has also informed this theory (Benotsch et al.,
2000; D’Imperio, Dubow, & Ippolito, 2000; Dubow, Schmidt, McBride, Edwards, &
Merk, 1993; Dubow, Tisak, Causey, Hryshko, & Reid, 1991; Fontana, Schwartz, &
Rosenheck, 1997; Garmezy & Rutter, 1983; Golding, 1989; Keenan & Newton,
1984; Lazarus, 1993; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Thus, resilience is conceptualized
as relative resistance to psychosocial stressors or adversity. Although varying
models of resiliency have been tested, researchers and theorists agree that the
construct is salient in the context of stress and adversity and is not operative in
the absence of environmental stressors (Jew, Green, & Kroger, 1999; Rutter, 1999).
The central constructs of the theory include risk factors/mechanisms, vulnerability factors, and protective factors/mechanisms. Risk factors and mechanisms
have been conceptualized in alternate ways in the literature: either as 1) the
events or conditions of adversity (for example, poverty) themselves for which
there is empirical evidence of association with psychopathology, illness, or dysfunctional developmental outcomes or as 2) factors that operate to reduce resistance to stressors/adversity. Vulnerability factors are traits, genetic predispositions, or environmental and biological deficits (such as cognitive impairments)
for which there is empirical evidence of heightened response, sensitivity, or reaction to stressors or risk factors. The constructs of vulnerability factors and risk factors are sometimes used interchangeably in the literature. Protective factors and
mechanisms are traits, contextual characteristics, and interventions that operate
to enhance or promote resistance, or which may moderate the effect of risk factors, and for which there is empirical evidence of association with health and
functional developmental outcomes. Rutter (1987) suggests that protective
mechanisms may operate in one of four ways to allow overcoming odds in the
face of adversity: by reducing risk impact, by reducing negative chain reactions to
risk factors, by promoting resiliency traits (i.e., the opposite of vulnerability factors, such as self-efficacy and optimism), and by setting up new opportunities for
success. Reducing risk impact can occur not only by way of buffering events and
social networks, but also by inoculation due to successful coping with earlier,
milder stressful events. Protective and risk mechanisms have been found to vary
according to the type of adversity, type of resilient outcome, and life stage under
analysis; risk factors in one context may be protective in another (Rutter, 1999;
Smith-Osborne, 2006; Ungar, 2004).
Research on resilience among children, adolescents, and young adults has
found a positive relationship between spirituality, social support, social capital,
income, and personal/family traits (e.g., hardiness, coherence, social competence and self-efficacy, normal attachment, healthy attributions, active stress
appraisal, and coping), and resistance to a variety of risk factors, including psychiatric disorders and school failure/drop-out (Daining, 2005; Garmezy, 1991;
Luthar et al., 2000; Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Richardson, 2002; Rutter, 1999a;
Smith & Carson, 1997; Werner, 1992). Research on military families dealing with
war-induced separation and trauma has found associations between resilience
and similar protective mechanisms (Benotsch et al., 2000; Lavee et al., 1985;
McCubbin & Dahl, 1976; McCubbin, Dahl, Lester, Benson, & Robertson, 1976;
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McCubbin, Hunter, & Dahl, 1975; McCubbin et al., 1980; McCubbin & McCubbin,
1996; Patterson, 2002; Sutker et al., 1995; Thoits, 1983).
Units of Analysis
Life span theory is most commonly applied to the individual and family as the
units of analysis (McCubbin et al., 1980). However, Erikson (1962, 1968, 1969) proposed that this theory could apply to humanity as an entity, thus not being limited to one’s interactions with individuals, groups, or specific environments/institutions.
Subsequent theorists, such as Coles (1990, 1991, 1997) and Strauss and Howe
(1991), have focused on the more macro-level implications of Erikson’s concepts,
for example, in investigating human development within generations and religious reference groups.
Like life span theory, resiliency theory has been most commonly applied to
individuals and family units that are consistent with these theories’ shared developmental focus. More recent investigations of specific risk and protective factors,
however, have shown a trend toward the examination of macro-level or contextual variables (Herrenkohl et al., 2003; Schafft, 2006; Smith-Osborne, 2005, 2006;
Ungar, 2004), such as neighborhoods (e.g., disorganized, residentially unstable)
and institutional policies.
Aspects of Human Development
Rapid advances in the knowledge base about the biological underpinnings of
human development tend to lend support to conceptualizations of the life stages
that are more fluid throughout the life span, rather than invariant or even necessarily sequential (Robbins et al., 1998; Thelen & Smith, 1994). Incorporation of
this new knowledge is seen most clearly in researchers who focus on adult development and aging. George Vaillant (1993), for example, pointed out that:
If adult development is to be conceived as a psychobiological process
then it must conform to biology, and neither to social mores nor to
chronological age. This means that, as with shaving and menstruation,
not everybody will reach a given stage at the same chronological age (p.
166).
Similarly, Sharon McQuaide, in her research on “Women at Midlife” (1998),
examined biological and cohort variables to add to life span theory. She found
that “The generation of women now entering midlife differs from previous generations” (p. 21), and that women who were “’blocked from being in the world’
(through disability, poor health, involuntary unemployment, limited spending
power)” (p. 29) were less likely to achieve well-being and other indicators of generativity, Erikson’s designation for the midlife stage issue. Life span theory, then,
has the flexibility to address various aspects of human development throughout
its stages.
Resiliency theory has, from its inception, been remarkable for encompassing
the broad biopsychosocial aspects of human development, as well as for crossreferencing empirical findings on normative or healthy human development with
findings on pathological development (Cichetti & Cannon, 1999). Early develop-
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159
ment of the theory gave more attention to individual characteristics and to factors present in childhood, which were associated with adult outcomes, thus privileging enduring traits from earlier life stages. Although recent cross-sectional
studies have begun to offer more possibilities for developing an understanding of
resiliency in middle and later adulthood, this theory’s current utility is, in its
application to the broad aspects of human development, from infancy through
early adulthood.
Philosophical Underpinnings
The life span theory philosophical underpinnings, most of which have been
noted previously in this paper, include: a health and adaptation orientation,
rather than a medical illness-oriented orientation; a special interest in the earlier
stages of life; an ontogenetic perspective with emphasis on predictable and discontinuous life stages; a transition period between stages, which may be characterized by increased tension and disorganization (Erikson’s “psychosocial crises”);
an intrapsychic focus and an interactive focus; and lifelong development. As
noted previously, the life span theorists who built on Erikson’s work have gone far
in addressing the limitations of many of these philosophical underpinnings, as
well as the biases built into the original theory. Resiliency theory is characterized
as similarly salutogenic, but with a philosophical orientation toward the linear,
cumulative connections between earlier life stages and adulthood for those at
risk. Resiliency research to date has been largely conducted by Western scientists
and has had a linear, positivistic paradigm. Thus, it has been criticized as hegemonic and, thereby, limited in its scope in accounting for diverse resiliency experiences. Philosophically, resiliency theory is more heavily focused than life span
theory on interactions between the environment and person in terms of environmental adversity and personal protective traits. As with life span theory, more
recent work in resiliency theory has tipped the balance philosophically more in
the direction of contextual protective variables, often operationalized as social
groups and community and institutional characteristics.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The evident strengths of life span theory include its expansion of understanding
of personality development through the life span, its utility across a variety of
human service settings and functions, and its “generativity,” to borrow Erikson’s
term and reapply it to theory-building. Life span theory gave rise to a rich plethora of human development models, not only to increase understanding of specific
life stages or the entire life cycle, but also to address intermediate and macro-level
entities, such as families, family-run businesses, social movements led by “great”
personalities, faith communities and religious reference groups, and entire generational cohorts. In so doing, this theory has been applied to disciplines beyond
the human service domain. For example, the sociological concept of the bourgeois bohemian (Brooks, 2001), the theological concept of Gen X religiosity
(Beaudoin, 2000), and the economic concept of style as a form of self-expression
(Postrel, 2003), all owe their origins ultimately to life span theory.
Several of the most cogent points of criticism of life span theory weaknesses
have been noted above: the Euro-American, middle class, male bias; the rigidity
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of the life stage concept; and the notable lack of empirical support. Another, less
frequently discussed weakness is the theory’s failure to address or adequately
explain the sources of the stage shifts (Haroutunian, 1983; Oyama, 1985) and the
application of those stage shifts across domains (Thelen, 1987). Concomitantly,
the theory has been targeted by critics for failure to account for the emergence of
new forms in each stage (e.g., why do immobilized Hopi babies start walking at
the same age as mobile WASP babies) in the context of the nature versus nurture
dichotomy.
Resiliency theory shows promise as an emerging theory, which extends life span
theory in offering predictive and explanatory constructs relevant to healthy
development in the face of adversity. Its constructs and models have been used
flexibly by social workers in concert with other theoretical perspectives, such as
the ecosystems perspective (Fraser, 1997; Gilgun, 1997), systems theory (Ungar,
2004), the differential resiliency model (Palmer, 1997), and the social development model (Herrenkohl et al., 2003). Furthermore, this theory has demonstrated that it offers both a viable platform for developmental research and a conceptual framework capable of elegant and parsimonious evolution based on that
research. Resiliency theory has the advantage of being empirically based from its
inception and of thereby incorporating ongoing findings and constructs from
biology and neuroscience, such as neuroplasticity (Rutter, 1999b). It has begun to
demonstrate utility in application across human service settings and practice
models and across life stages and trajectories (Greene, 2007).
One important limitation of resiliency theory is its restriction to application
only to populations in adversity or populations experiencing trauma or high
stress levels. Theoretical constructs may be misapplied in research or practice to
normative life cycle issues or moderately stressful events. The constructs themselves have been criticized as tautological and are inconsistently defined across
studies, thus limiting validity and reliability of the research. Considerable effort
has been made by leading resiliency theorists, particularly in the last decade, to
clarifying and standardize these definitions. This theory has also been criticized
for its positivist research paradigm to date, with consequential bias towards linear explanatory models based on predictable, hierarchical relationships between
protective and risk factors (Ungar, 2004). This tendency may limit its utility in
application to diverse cultures and populations. On the other hand, the original
empirical basis for the development of the theory consisted heavily of studies of
cross-cultural and ethnic minority populations, which may be evidence to counter this criticism.
Empirical Support
Life span theory has been criticized as lacking an empirical base of support, much
like psychodynamic theory in general has been criticized. It is true that many theorists in this perspective use clinical case and cross-cultural observation (Erikson,
1968; Coles, 1990; Greenspan, 1992) and, in some instances, examination of the
lives of great men and women, as their primary methodology for generating the
theory. For example, Erikson studied the lives of Luther and Gandhi (1962, 1969),
while Vaillant looked at Florence Nightingale’s life in his analysis of women’s adult
development (Vaillant, 1993). Coles is robust in his defense of these clinically ori-
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ented methodologies in generating rich, contextually-based theoretical constructs, and is critical of the biases and limitations he finds inherent in empirical,
quantitative methodologies (1990, pp. 22-39).
However, Vaillant’s longitudinal study of adult men (1977), his follow-up study
of male adults from a different socioeconomic group (1993), and recent quantitative studies of adult development (McQuaide, 1998; Norman, McCluskeyFawcett, & Ashcraft, 2002) have provided empirical support both for the life span
concepts derived from ego defense theory and for life stage concepts.
In general, the life span theory has maximal utility when used to describe and
explain the human development of individuals and, at a probabilistic rather than
prescriptive level (Robbins et al., 1998). Erikson indicated his general concurrence with this summation in his discussion of the misapplication of his concept
of the psychosocial crisis (1968, pp. 15-43).
As previously described in this paper, resiliency theory has been conceived on
an empirical basis, with two examples being Werner and Smith’s study of infants
in Hawaii and the English and Romanian Adoptees Study Team’s investigation of
institutionalized children who were later adopted (Rutter, Quinton, & Hill, 1990;
Rutter & ERA, 1998). Resiliency theory-based empirical findings have been useful
in refining important practice modalities used in social work. For example, such
findings suggested a shift in the focus on family therapy to include assessment of
the differential impact of family communication patterns on different family
members, depending on individual vulnerability factors and peer group influences (Rutter, 1999b; Greene, 2007). Richardson (2002) has suggested that there
have been three waves of resiliency research: the first wave focused on identifying
resilient qualities in person and environment, the second wave focused on specifying resilient processes effective in overcoming the odds, and the third and current wave in identifying innate transformational processes. Empirical testing of
resiliency constructs and models is ongoing in several disciplines, including
social work (e.g., Finkelstein et al., 2005; Hrabowski, Freeman, Maton, & Greif,
1998, 2002; Kennedy, 2005; Wright, Fopma-Loy, & Fischer, 2005).
IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK
Consistency with Social Work Values
Despite its lack of empirical evidence, life span theory has enjoyed widespread
acceptance, not only among social workers, but among the wide range of human
service disciplines, particularly those with a psychodynamic theoretical perspective regardless of discipline. Thus, part of its appeal has come from its expansion
of Freudian theory and its correction of some of the limitations and biases of that
theory. Its optimistic, strengths-oriented perspective, and its applicability to
some domains other than the individual (McCubbin et al., 1980) have shown consistency with social work values. Th
