Initial Insights From a Study of Emotions and Positive Personality Change in Syrian Origin Young Adults Who Have Recently Resettled in the Netherlands

Abstract

Post-traumatic growth is a compelling idea (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014), yet, extant research has often employed retrospective reports of change, rather than examining change over time. In Karakter, we followed a sample of Syrian origin young adults who recently resettled in the Netherlands (initial N = 168) four times over a 13-month period to examine experiences of adversity, emotions, and positive personality change. We provide initial insights by narrating the changes, challenges, and opportunities we encountered in the research. We describe how we incorporated open science practices in Karakter. We propose analyses that describe the demographic characteristics (e.g., education level, length of stay in the Netherlands, and family members present in the Netherlands and in Syria), experiences of adversity (i.e., past traumatic experiences and current post-migration problems), positive personality traits (i.e., attachment, resilient coping, empathy, gratitude, and compassion), and the Big Five personality traits of the people in our sample. We close by suggesting good practices for researchers who are interested in conducting similar studies with populations that are traditionally considered hard-to-reach in the future.

Investigating the within-person structure and correlates of emotional experiences in everyday life using an emotion family approach.

“…Relatively recently, researchers in personality development have become interested in using short-term intensive longitudinal designs (Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013) in their research. LEWAS (Bleidorn et al, 2020) and related perspectives (Baumert et al, 2017; Jayawickreme et al, 2019; Wrzus & Roberts, 2017) provide a framework for integrating such “measurement bursts” into these more traditional studies to obtain a more fine-grained understanding of how people’s personalities can change (e.g., see the Karakter project and the Personality and Interpersonal Roles Study for examples of this approach; Chung, 2021; Wilson et al, 2015).…”

A longitudinal study of dispositional compassion in Syrian origin young adults resettling in the Netherlands

“…5 Nonetheless, although our sample size was relatively small compared to other longitudinal studies, our sample size of 168 is quite large for one focused on Syrian young adults with refugee backgrounds. Recruiting a sufficiently large and representative sample of people from specific populations living in disadvantaged circumstances can be challenging, and the number of participants in the study is likely to be smaller than samples drawn from normative populations (Chung et al, 2021; Jayawickreme et al, 2021).…”

“…In the present study, we used data from Karakter (Chung et al, 2021), a longitudinal study focused on emotions and positive personality change in a sample of Syrian young adults with refugee backgrounds who have recently resettled in the Netherlands. Karakter used a strengths-based approach (e.g., Sleijpen et al, 2016) to examine positive characteristics, events, and outcomes for people with refugee backgrounds.…”

Associations among migration risk factors, cultural identity conflict, and psychological symptoms among Syrian emerging adults with refugee backgrounds in the Netherlands

“…This study is part of the Karakter project (Chung et al, 2022) (https://www.karakterproject.nl/), a 13‐month longitudinal study funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Participants were primarily recruited through organizations that serve people with refugee backgrounds (e.g., asylum seeker centers, refugee support organizations, language centers, and community groups) and through announcements on social media in Arabic and Dutch that included a link to the project website.…”

“…Items were administered regarding the participants' ethnicity, age, gender, religious affiliation, highest completed educational level, refugee status, and length of stay in the Netherlands. A detailed overview of the demographic variables is provided in Chung et al (2022).…”