Early Childhood Maltreatment and Profiles of Resilience

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PROJECT SUMMARY Child maltreatment continues to be a serious public health concern, with approximately 700,000 victims each year. Although maltreated children are at significant risk for negative developmental outcomes, some maltreated children exhibit resilience, which is the process of positive adaptation and functioning in the face of adverse life circumstances. Resilience during early childhood is particularly important because the basis of core competence is formed during this period, making it a critical window of opportunity for promoting life-long resilience; yet we know very little about how resilience operates in young maltreated children. Furthermore, despite theoretical evidence that supports the multidimensionality of resilience, prior empirical research has often employed a simple dichotomous view of resilient vs. non-resilient, failing to accurately describe the ways in which resilience outcomes and processes may develop. Understanding different profiles of resilience functioning (e.g., low resilience outcomes across all developmental domains; high cognitive functioning but low social functioning) and identifying maltreatment characteristics and family ecology that distinguish variations in resilience profiles are important new questions to move the field forward. The proposed research makes a meaningful contribution to the fields of maltreatment and resilience research through the novel application of a person-centered analytical approach in studying heterogeneity in resilience outcomes among young children. Additionally, the study will identify maltreatment characteristics and family risk and protective factors that shape the development of resilience during early childhood, offering valuable information for intervention development and clinical practice. A secondary analysis will be conducted using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW-II) and The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study– Kindergarten Class of 2010- 11 (ECLS-K: 2011) to address three specific aims: (1) To identify distinct profiles of resilience across multiple domains of functioning (cognitive, emotional, behavioral, social) among children in early childhood; (2) To investigate concurrent and lagged relationships of maltreatment characteristics and family risk and protective factors to resilience profiles; and (3) To determine to what extent resilience profiles at baseline remain stable or change over time and examine how various maltreatment characteristics and family risk and protective factors are related to transition patterns of resilience functioning over time. The study aims closely match the NICHD's New Research Priorities to stimulate research to “promote psychosocial adjustment for individuals in high-risk environments.” Further, the proposed study contributes to the NICHD's mission of “ensuring that all children have the chance to achieve their full potential for healthy and productive lives” by identifying the most vulnerable group of children with the greatest need of services, and guiding the effort to reduce disparities in healthy development during the early years of life.