Resilience in Men and Women Experiencing Sexual Assault or Traumatic Stress: Validation and Replication of the Scale of Protective Factors.

The literature on sexual assault (SA) typically has been generalized to women and children. However, both men and women experience SA. Research shows that not all individuals experience the negative impacts of SA in the same way. The ability to buffer the negative effects of SA may lie in specific protective factors that determine resilience. Resilience scales used in adult populations have not been validated for use in SA samples. The purpose of the present study was to replicate the factor structure of a resilience scale, the Scale of Protective Factors (SPF), in a sample of emerging adults (n = 571) and to validate the replicated model on a subsample of the participants who reported SA (n = 173). Additionally, we sought to examine gender differences in mental health outcomes including depression and anxiety, and the availability of protective factors that determine resilience among those participants who reported experiencing SA (n = 173) as compared to other forms of traumatic stress (n = 132). The SPF achieved good model fit in the larger emerging adult sample and adequate model fit was achieved in the SA subsample. Results indicated significant gender differences in mental health outcomes with η2 ranging between .03 and .21. Implications and future directions are discussed.

The Development of the Scale of Protective Factors: Resilience in a Violent Trauma Sample.

This research developed the Scale of Protective Factors (SPF-24) to measure protective factors contributing to resilience. We investigated the factor structure of 35 items. After exploratory factor analysis, we subjected 25 items representing 2 social-interpersonal and 2 cognitive-individual factors to confirmatory factor analysis. The sample consisted of 942 college students from 3 studies and 2 institutions. To examine the diagnostic function of the SPF, we used clinical criteria to identify a subsample of participants who had experienced violent trauma and scored low, moderate, or high on an established resilience scale. Results showed that the low-resilient group scored significantly lower on all subscales of the SPF with marked differences in prioritizing/planning behavior. Implications for the research and clinical settings are discussed.