positive adaptation. As noted at the outset of this chapter, resilience is a phenomenon or process reflecting relatively positive adaptation despite significant adversity or trauma. Because it is a superordinate construct subsuming two distinct dimensions-adversity and positive adaptationresilience is never directly measured, but instead is indirectly inferred based on evidence of the two subsumed constructs.Adversity, in developmental science research on resilience, is defined in terms of statistical probabilities: A high-risk condition is one that carries high odds for measured maladjustment in critical domains. Exposure to maternal depression or community violence, for example, constitutes high risk because children experiencing each of these manifest significantly greater maladjustment than those who do not. Aside from discrete risk dimensions such as parent psychopathology, researchers have also examined composites of multiple risk indices, such as parents' low income and education, histories of mental illness, and disorganization in neighborhoods (Sameroff, Seifer, Zax, & Barocas, 1987). When risks such as these coexist (as they often do, in the real world), effects tend to be synergistic, with child outcomes being far poorer than when any of these risks exists in isolation.Positive adaptation, the second component in the construct of resilience, refers to adjustment that is much better than what would be expected, given exposure to the risk condition under study. In studies of resilience in childhood, this construct is most commonly operationalized in terms of behaviorally manifested social competence, or success at meeting stage-salient developmental tasks (Luthar, 2006;Masten & Tellegen, 2012). To illustrate, competence is often operationally defined in terms of observed secure attachment behaviors among young children, and in terms of positive relationships with peers and teachers, as well as good academic grades, among older children and adolescents.In addition to being developmentally appropriate, indicators used to operationalize "positive adaptation" must be of high conceptual relevance to the particular risk condition examined, in terms of both domains assessed, and stringency of criteria used. When communities carry many risks for antisocial problems, for example, it is logical to assess children's maintenance of socially conforming behaviors (Jain et al., 2012), whereas among offspring of depressed parents, the absence of depressive problems would be of special significance (Beardslee, Gladstone, & O'Connor, 2012). With regard to stringency of criteria, similarly, decisions must depend on the seriousness of the risks being studied. In research on children facing major traumas, it is appropriate to define risk-evasion in terms of the absence of serious psychopathology rather than excellence in everyday adaptation Rutter, 2012). Finally, positive child adaptation must be considered across multiple adjustment spheres; overly narrow foci on particular behaviors can be misleading in suggesting that ri...
