Resilience among Women in their First Semester of College: A Structural Equation Modeled Validation Study
Rebecca Wiegmann, Ashley SprinkleJennifer Madonia & Crishauna Rolack
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Jeffery E. Aspelmeier
The project that we will be presenting at the South Eastern Psychological Association Meeting concerned resiliency of first-year, female college students in an attempt to extend the use of the pre-existing Adolescent Girls’ Resilience Scale (AGRS; Aspelmeier, Whittington, & Budbill, 2015). The AGRS was previously used to measure change in the potential for resilience among adolescent girls, ages ten to eighteen, resulting from participation in a broad range of programs designed to promote resilience among girls, particularly in short-term, outdoor camp and adventure programs. Confidence and Positive Peer relationships were the two factors chosen on the basis of being amenable to change and predictive of resilience to traumatic events. In the previous research, 900 adolescent girls in wildlife adventure camps were given the questionnaire and had their results taken longitudinally as they participated in events over the course of the camp.  The AGRS was re-administered to see if resilience scores increased post intervention. 
The new research, Resilience among women in the first semester at college: A validation study was conducted to validate the measure with older females, ages seventeen to nineteen, particularly women in their first year of college at Radford University. Questionnaires testing the two factors of the AGRS were also administered to assess the content validity of the measure. The related measures were as follows: Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES) (Rosenberg, 1965); a short form of the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ) (Sarason, Sarason, Shearin, & Pierce, 1987), which measures both network density and satisfaction with support network; Experience in Close Relationships (ECR) (Brenna, Clark, & Shaver, 1998), which provides scores on the dimensions of avoidance and anxiety; and Symptoms Checklist 90 Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1994), which generates a global symptoms index. The results found that the AGRS correlated and thus captured information as the RSES, SSQ, and ECR, and negatively correlated with the SCL-90-R, as it was a measure of risk factors of mental illness. In addition, the AGRS was able to capture more information than the Rosenberg Self-Esteem.
Keywords: Resilience, College women, Attachment, Self-esteem, Social Support
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