Measuring Resilience in the Context of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: A Novel Application of the Adult Resilience Measure (ARM)

Abstract

There is a rich body of research addressing the issues of conflict-related sexual violence, and a similar wealth of scholarship focused on resilience. To date, however, these literatures have rarely engaged with each other. This article developed from an ongoing research project that seeks to address this gap, by exploring how victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in three highly diverse settings – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda – demonstrate resilience. This research is the first to apply the Adult Resilience Measure (ARM), a 28-item scale that seeks to measure protective resources across individual, relational, and contextual subscales, to the context of conflict-related sexual violence. A total of 449 female and male participants in the three aforementioned countries completed the ARM (in the framework of the study questionnaire) as part of this research. This article presents some of the results of the analyses. Specifically, we first sought to establish through Confirmatory Factor Analysis whether the ARM was actually measuring the same construct in all three countries, by confirming the invariance (or otherwise) of the factor structure. The second aim was to explore how different resources function and cluster in different cultural contexts, to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the different protective factors in the lives of study participants. We generated different factor structures for BiH, Colombia, and Uganda respectively, suggesting that a single factor structure does not sufficiently capture the diverse groupings of protective factors linked to the particularities of each country, including the dynamics of the conflicts themselves. Ultimately, we use the findings to underscore the need for policy approaches that move away from a deficit model and give greater attention to strengthening and investing in the (often overlooked) protective resources that victims-/survivors may already have in their everyday lives.

Resilience in the context ofconflict‐relatedsexual violence and beyond: A “sentient ecology” framework

“…This article draws specifically on the qualitative data, consisting of one‐to‐one semi‐structured interviews with 63 female and male victims−/survivors of CRSV. The interviewees were selected from a larger dataset of 449 victims−/survivors of CRSV across the three countries (BiH n = 126, Colombia n = 171, Uganda n = 152), all of whom completed a study questionnaire (for an analysis of the questionnaire data, see Clark et al, 2021 ). 5 Two particular factors guided the selection of interviewees from the quantitative dataset.…”

“…With the participants’ informed consent, interviews were recorded using fully encrypted digital voice recorders. Ethics approval was granted by the author’s host institution, the research funder and by relevant authorities in each country (for a discussion of some of the ethics issues raised, see Clark et al, 2021 ).…”

The living past in the lives of victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence: Temporal implications for transitional justice

“…There are obvious limitations in using a questionnaire to study a concept as complex as resilience, which is why the project used a mixed-methods design. Approaching resilience from a quantitative angle, however, is a useful way of distilling the concept and stripping it back in a way that facilitates comparative analysis (see Clark et al, 2021). Resilience was quantified using the Adult Resilience Measure (ARM), a 28-item scale divided into individual, relational and contextual sub-scales (Resilience Research Centre, 2016).…”

Trauma, resilience, and distress in post-revolution Egypt.

“…My family cares about me), the measure was deemed to be developmentally appropriate for adults. Versions of the CRYM (i.e., the Adult Resilience Measure) have been successfully adapted and used in other contexts with similar modifications (Clark et al, 2021). The measure has several available versions, including report forms for adults.…”