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A Systematic Review of Strengths and Resilience Outcome Literature Relevant to Children and Adolescents

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Abstract

The concepts of strengths and resilience are essential for understanding and promoting positive development in children and adolescents. These concepts have been studied in the research literature for many years and more recently have been applied to child and adolescent assessment and intervention research. However, strength and resilience based intervention programs have not been evaluated rigorously for their use of empirical methodology. In this article, we systematically identified and reviewed all of the outcome studies over the last decade for strength and resilience based intervention programs to assess the extent to which these studies utilized controlled empirical methodology. The results of the review yielded 11 outcome studies that examined strength and resilience based practices. Using the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies developed by the Effective Public Health Practice Project, we found three studies to be high quality, exhibiting high levels of experimentally controlled research. The remaining 8 studies we considered to be moderate to weak quality research. We concluded that these 11 studies provide preliminary support for the efficacy of strength and resilience based interventions. Our systematic review also highlights areas where methodology in future studies can be strengthened to provide more conclusive evidence of these approaches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, ON, P7B 5E1, Canada

    Keith Brownlee

  2. Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jennine Rawana

  3. ErinoakKids Centre for Treatment and Development, Mississauga, ON, Canada

    Jessica Franks

  4. Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

    Jessica Franks

  5. Department of Psychology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

    Julie Harper, Jasmine Bajwa & Erin O’Brien

  6. Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Ashley Clarkson

Authors
  1. Keith Brownlee
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  2. Jennine Rawana
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  3. Jessica Franks
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  4. Julie Harper
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  5. Jasmine Bajwa
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  6. Erin O’Brien
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  7. Ashley Clarkson
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Correspondence to Keith Brownlee.

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Brownlee, K., Rawana, J., Franks, J. et al. A Systematic Review of Strengths and Resilience Outcome Literature Relevant to Children and Adolescents. Child Adolesc Soc Work J 30, 435–459 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-013-0301-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-013-0301-9

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