Resiliencia, Habilidades Interpersonales, Problemas de Conducta y Sintomatología Emocional en Adolescentes Colombianos Vulnerables: Un estudio Longitudinal
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García Martín, María Belén | 2019
The adolescent stage is impregnated with aspects of the stage of development in which they
find themselves, which implies the experience of physiological, personal, emotional and
behavioral changes. Additionally, adolescents who reside in low socio-economic strata and
socially excluded are exposed to critical situations such as the lack of satisfaction of basic
needs or scarce interpersonal skills from the family context, which end in higher order
difficulties. In several of these lower social strata, acts of violence, delinquency, illegal
recruitment or psychoactive substances use, gangs and armed conflict, among other problems
occur more frequently. This puts the adolescents at a crossroads: get away from this type of
problem or participate in them to obtain social acceptance. This last option generates
behavioral problems, interpersonal relationships that are deficient in the different areas of
development and, even more serious, emotional problems such as anxiety, depression and
social stress. On the other hand, society does not always offer adolescents and their families
access and availability opportunities in basic services, recreation, academic and work
opportunities. This has serious, adverse and even traumatic consequences. It is here where
the literature states that adolescents should choose to perpetuate themselves in the problems
or resist all these eventualities and manage to face situations adaptively from the individual
and the familiar. This ability to resist adverse situations is known as Resilience. Capacity that
is studied by different theorists for about 40 years. It has been understood in two different
ways: a) as the quality, personality trait or attribute of resisting adversity and serious
situations and b) as a dynamic skill, product of learning and experience and therefore,
trainable. Much has been studied about the influence of contextual factors on the behavior
problems of adolescents belonging to vulnerable contexts (family, society, community, etc.)
and how they can predict the development of some or other problems. But there is not so
much empirical evidence that speaks of the personal factors of the adolescents themselves
and how they can predict the development of difficulties when exposed to the same contexts
(resilience, interpersonal skills, etc.). Therefore, the general objective of this doctoral thesis
is to analyze if resilience can predict significantly interpersonal skills, behavior problems and
emotional problems in Colombian adolescents in vulnerable contexts. Accordingly, the
specific objectives are to a) analyze the psychometric properties of the CD-RISC scale in
vulnerable Colombian adolescents and analyze the psychometric properties of a reduced
version of 10 items; b) assess the effectiveness of a training program of interpersonal
problem-solving skills in a group of vulnerable adolescents and c) measure/analyze through
a longitudinal study how resilience can be an important predictor of interpersonal skills or
resolution skills of conflicts and in turn, can predict behavioral problems and emotional
symptomatology in exposed adolescents in risk contexts at urban and rural level in Colombia.
In study 1, the CD-RISC resilience questionnaire was adapted and validated by
Connor and Davidson (2003), which measures resilience as a process, that is, from a dynamic
and trainable perspective. It was applied to a sample of Colombian adolescents, initially
performing the psychometric study with an exploratory factorial analysis in its original
version of 25 items and then a confirmatory factorial analysis of 10 items. The factorial
analysis concluded that the CD-RISC-10 has a structure of a single factor with very good
adjustments.
Study 2 evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention program of interpersonal
conflict resolution skills in 90 Colombian adolescents in vulnerable situations, between 11 and 17 years old, identified with behavioral problems and with difficulties in interpersonal
skills. The data analysis was carried out from an ANOVA of repeated measures with an
intragroup factor (pretest, posttest and follow-up) and an intergroup factor (experimental
group and waiting list control), taking gender as covariates (men/women) and age. The results
showed significant improvements in interpersonal skills and behavior problems in the
experimental group with respect to the control group on the waiting list after the intervention
p <0.05 and large effect sizes between 0.75 and 0.98. It is confirmed that this program is
effective to improve the skills of interaction with others and the solution of behavioral
problems and emotional symptoms such anxiety, depression and social stress in adolescents.
Study 3 aimed to measure/analyze through a longitudinal study whether resilience
can be an important predictor of interpersonal skills or conflict resolution skills and in turn,
can predict behavioral problems and emotional symptomatology in adolescents exposed in
contexts of risk at urban and rural level in Colombia. Simple linear regressions found that
resilience significantly and positively predicted interpersonal skills and significantly and
negatively predicted both behavioral problems and emotional symptomatology (p <0.05). It
was found that adolescents with high levels of resilience (75% participants of study) have a
greater ability to cope with critical situations that occur in different contexts, have fewer
behavioral problems and less emotional symptoms than adolescents not resilient.
In conclusion, the present doctoral thesis has contributed to the adaptation and
validation of the CD-RISC to measure resilience as a process in adolescents (Study 1), to
verify the effectiveness of an interpersonal skills program that helped adolescents improve
their interpersonal relationships and to reduce the behavioral problems and emotional
symptoms (Study 2) and finally measure/analyze through a longitudinal study how the
resilience can be an important predictor of interpersonal skills, behavioral problems and emotional symptomatology in adolescents exposed in risk contexts at an urban and rural level
in Colombia (Study 3). These investigations has allowed us to glimpse new evaluation and
intervention strategies in adolescents from vulnerable contexts, to accompany them, to
improve their quality of life, their interpersonal relationships, their emotional problems and
most importantly, to study resilience as a trainable capacity, which It can make teenagers
generate a constructive life with clear goals.
LEER