Demographic Characteristics and Sense of Danger Predicting New Measure of Individual Resilience Following a War

Abstract

Four months after Israel's war with the Gaza Strip (2014) we distributed questionnaires to 510 adults: 251 civilians who live in southern Israel and have recently been threatened by massive missile fire, and 259 adults who live in northern Israel, which has not been under missile fire for the last eight years. The current study focuses on two issues: first, a new index to measure individual resilience based on recovery to distress symptoms ratio; second, examining five demographic characteristics and sense of danger as predictors of individual resilience. Path analysis indicated that individual resilience significantly correlated negatively with sense of danger and exposure (β=-0.34), and positively with level of religiosity (β=0.24) and income (β=0.17). Sense of danger mediated the associations between area of living, community size and level of exposure and individual resilience. Results are discussed in terms of the role of demographic characteristics with respect to individual resilience.