Conclusions about well-being being necessary but not sufficient for resilience may be unwarranted

Abstract

After conducting necessary condition analysis (NCA), researchers have concluded that a certain, not too low, level of well-being is necessary but not sufficient for a high level of resilience. However, as acknowledged by the developers of the test, NCA only evaluates if the association between two variables is characterized by some unspecified type of non-randomness and not conditions of necessity. The present findings, based on re-analyses of data, indicate a significant necessity effect of resilience on overall well-being, which is not logically compatible with well-being being necessary but not sufficient for resilience. Analyses with an extended version of NCA suggest that the association between overall well-being and resilience is characterized by equal degrees of necessity and sufficiency.