QRS Discussion/QRS-A Victimology

QRS Discussion/QRS-A Victimology Paper details: Attached is the article, directions, and this chapter's notes if needed. Assignments There will be 2 QRS Discussion Assignments, worth 10 points each. These will coincide with the 2 research articles (A & B ) that I will provide in the Content section of D2L. See grading rubric below. QRS stands for Question, Reaction, Summary. Through QRS, you will en gage in higher order thinking skills by (1) Reading a research article ; (2) Extracting central concepts; (3) Recognizing areas where your understanding of the reading is weak; (4) Formulating specific questions; (5) Critically analyzing the data supporting central concepts in the research article; and (6) Relating content from the article to previous knowledge learned in class. Q stands for Questions . These are questions that occur to you when you’re reading the research article. You should write these ques tions down as they arise. R represents Reaction . This is your emotional response to the reading. Did you like it or dislike it? Was it confusing or easy to understand? There is a documented link between emotion and memory. Thus, by thinking about your emo tional reaction to the research article you are promoting retention of the information. S signifies Summary . You will write a brief summary of what you think are the most important points for you to acquire upon reading the research article. What is the t akeaway? For each QRS Discussion Assignment, you will start by reading the assigned research article. You will likely need to read the article more than one time to fully comprehend it. Then, you will identify questions that occur to you while reading th e article. Then, you will prepare an emotional reaction to the research article. Lastly, you will prepare a brief but thorough summary of what you think are the most important points of the research article. All parts of this assignment should be typed int o a Microsoft Word document that is no less than one page long, single - spaced, but no more than two pages long, single - spaced. After running spell and grammar check, and proofreading, then copy and paste your assignment into the appropriate D2L discussion forum. Your response will be visible to your classmates. You will not be able to view your classmates' QRS Discussion Assignments until you submit your posting. After submitting your QRS Discussion Assignment into the D2L discussion forum, take the opportu nity to view your classmates’ responses. Grading Rubric for QRS D is cussion Assignments Points 10 8 6 Quality And Content Insightful questions, a thorough and honest description of student’s emotional reaction to the reading, and a detailed summary in which the most salient points of the reading are identified Excellent questions, but the reaction section lacks depth of self - evaluation or the summary section does not include one or more major ideas from the reading Cursory questions that clearly represent a l ack of depth of thought, reactions and summaries are weak or absent Format No less than one page, and no more than two pa ges, single spaced, no grammar or spelling errors , all words/ideas borrowed from sources accurately paraphrased and cited in APA style No less than one page, no more than two pages, single spaced, few grammar or spelling errors , all words/ideas borrowed from sources accurately paraphrased, but not cited in APA style Close to one page, single spaced, several grammar or spelling erro rs , all words/ideas borrowed from sources not accurately paraphrased or cited in APA style Journal of Traumatic Stress , Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2010, pp. 215–222 ( C © 2010) Resilience and Crime Victimization Mary Ann Dutton and Rebecca Greene Georgetown University Medical Center What do we know about resilience in crime victimization? In this article, the authors discuss resilience defined as protective factors (e.g., personality characteristics, biological characteristics, social and cultural factors, and community characteristics); as a process of adaptation (e.g., self-enhancement, positive cognitive appraisals, coping styles, and spirituality), including an iterative perspective on resilience as a cascade of protective processes; and as positive outcomes (e.g., lack of symptoms) following exposure to adverse events. Within each of these definitional frameworks, they consider general conceptual issues pertaining to resilience and then the small body of research that has focused specifically on resilience and some type of crime victimization. Research and clinical implications are discussed. What does resilience mean in the face of crime victimization? Why do some people seem to rebound after being robbed, mugged, or even sexually assaulted, whereas others experience a downward spiral of adverse mental and physical health? Efforts to understand the aftermath of adversity such as crime victimization, and trauma exposure in general, have focused largely on psychopathology. Lit- tle attention has been paid to the fact that many people adjust quite well despite crime victimization and to understanding the re- silience that this suggests. These individual differences in the ways people are affected by crime victimization further underscore the need to expand our understanding of resilience. Better knowledge of resilience can inform new approaches for enhancing pathways to positive outcomes following victimization by crime. Specifically, what resources might be integrated into both the criminal justice and health care systems—institutions that victims already navigate in the aftermath of crime—that might enhance resilience in both the short- and the long-term? There is, as yet, no single coherent conceptual framework to guide resilience research. As Masten pointed out (2007), There is a long history of controversy about the meaning of resilience and how to operationalize it. . . including debates about whether resilience is best defined as a trait, a process, an outcome, a pattern of life course development, narrow or broad, multifaceted or unidimensional, short- or long-term, and whether resilience should encompass recovery as well as resistance, internal as well as external adaptive functioning, and external as well as internal resources. (p. 924) We consider three different approaches to the definition of re- silience. We discuss resilience defined as protective factors (e.g., Mary Ann Dutton, Rebecca Greene, Georgetown Medical Center. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary Ann Dutton, 620 Kober Cogan Hall, Washington, DC. E-mail: mad27@georgetown.edu. C © 2010 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Published online in Wiley Inter- Science (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jts.20510 personality characteristics, biological characteristics, social and cultural factors, and community characteristics); as a process of adaptation (e.g., self-enhancement, positive cognitive appraisals, coping styles, and spirituality), including an iterative perspective on resilience as a cascade of protective processes; and as positive outcomes (e.g., lack of symptoms) following exposure to adverse events. Within each of these definitional frameworks defining re- silience, we consider first generalization of conceptual issues and then the small body of research that has focused specifically on some type of crime victimization. We included studies in this review that measured resilience in some way. We also focused on resilience following crime victimization involving individual perpetrator(s) against individ- ual victims. The literature involving torture, terrorism, or other mass trauma and combat are beyond the scope of this article. We searched PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/), PsycINFO (http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/), and the PILOTS database (Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress; http://www.ptsd.va.gov) and selected articles with the word “re- silience” or “resiliency” associated with some form of crime vic- timization. We included in the review those articles that met the following criteria: (1) empirical research with adults who had been a victim of a crime, (2) at least one research question that explicitly considered resilience or resiliency in relation to crime victimiza- tion, (3) research that included at least one standardized mea- sure defining resilience or resiliency and (4) research published in English. RESILIENCE AS PROTECTIVE FACTORS Resilience has been understood as a matter of character, dispo- sition, or endowment that is protective in the face of exposure to adverse or traumatic events. From this perspective, resilience consists of a set of factors that exist—in some dynamic or static manner—prior to crime victimization and that enhances positive 215 216 Dutton and Greene adaptation and protects against adverse outcomes. Here we con- sider not only individual (e.g., personality, biological, and so- cial/cultural characteristics, prior trauma history), but also com- munity characteristics that contribute to resilience. A number of individual personality factors have been identified as protective in the face of both acute and chronic adverse situ- ations. Many of these are linked to extroverted personality char- acteristics, for example, hardiness (Kobasa, 1979). According to a recent review (Agaibi & Wilson, 2005), hardiness leads to better outcomes following exposure to stress because hardy individuals appraise threatening situations as less distressing, are more confi- dent, and thus, better able to use active coping and engage social support. Other personality characteristics that are associated with resilience include internal locus of control, self-esteem, altruism, and ego defense (Agaibi & Wilson, 2005). Resiliency has also been associated with an individual’s biologi- cal characteristics. The potential links between biological processes and resilience are many. Broad domains of biological processes that are potentially related to resilience include (1) neural plasticity of brain structure and function, (2) emotional reactivity (e.g., star- tle reflex, hemispheric electroencephalogram reactivity), (3) hemi- spheric asymmetry, (4) neuroendocrine systems, and (5) immuno- logical systems focused extensively on the role of dysregulation in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, especially in the devel- opment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Further, preliminary studies have shown several compounds to be related to resilience following exposure to extreme stress. Neu- ropeptide Y, a peptide that is thought to function as an anxiolytic in stressful situations (Yehuda, Flory, Southwick, & Charney, 2006), is one example. Allopregnanolone is a also a potential resiliency fac- tor that has been associated with PTSD (Hoge, Austin, & Pollack, 2007), known to counteract the effects of reduced y-amino-butyric acid A following stress. Genetic markers are another factor to be considered in the com- plex array of resiliency. Stein, Campbell-Sills, and Gelernter (2009) defined emotional resilience as the ability to maintain healthy and stable levels of psychological functioning in the wake of stress and trauma, and they hypothesize that genetic factors confer protec- tion in the face of adversity, although no specific genetic factors for resilience have been identified definitively. However, in a study of 423 college students (Stein et al., 2009), resilience measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003) was associated with the short variant of a polymorphism in the promoter of the serotonin transporter gene (gene, SLC6A4 ; variant, 5HTTLPR) and, thus, is a prime candidate for a resilience gene. That is, variation in 5HTTLPR is associated with individ- ual differences in emotional resilience, an individual’s ability to withstand and bounce back from stress. A range of social and cultural factors have been associated with resilience, including gender, age, race and ethnicity, social support networks, and prior trauma history. These factors may operate in different ways, either directly or moderating the effects of crime victimization by interacting with various other mechanisms of action. Research on gender has shown inconsistent associations with resilience, with women shown to be at greater risk than men (Breslau, Chilcoat, Kessler, Peterson, & Lucia, 1999; Mancini & Bonanno, 2006), although in a study of child abuse and neglect, Widom and her colleagues (DuMont, Widom, & Czaja, 2007) found that women were more likely to be resilient across multiple domains of functioning in both adolescence and young adulthood. The results for ethnicity and race are also mixed. An Israeli study found Arabs to be almost six times less likely to be trauma stress resilient compared to Israeli citizens (Bleich, Gelkopf, Melamed, & Solomon, 2006). DuMont and colleagues (2007) found that non-Hispanic Whites were less likely to be classified as resilient adolescence, but no effect was found in young adulthood. Social support has widely been recognized as important for re- silience in studies of depressed mothers who were survivors of child sexual abuse (Wright, Fopma-Loy, & Fischer, 2005), firefighters (North et al., 2002; Regehr, Hill, & Glancy, 2000), canine rescue handlers after the 9/11 terrorist attack (Alvarez & Hunt, 2005), and adults who were abused and neglected as children (DuMont et al., 2007). Resiliency has not only been attributed to individuals, but to communities and social networks that can promote resilience in individuals (Harvey, 2007). Community characteristics may be particularly relevant when crime victimization affects large com- munities, such as in the 2003 sniper shooting in the Washington, DC area involving John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, where victims appeared to be targeted at random within a relatively large geographic area. Another, more recent, example are the Ft. Hood shootings where the military community and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars provide a unique context that contributes to the resilience of family members who lost a loved one in the shootings, as well as to other members of the military community at Ft. Hood and elsewhere. Norris and Stevens (2007) discuss the adaptive community ca- pacities underlying “community resilience”, (1) trusted sources of information and effective communication; (2) community com- petence, economic development, and collective communication about the trauma; and (3) mechanisms to augment natural social supports of family and friends (to promote connectedness). Five elements described by Hobfoll et al. (2007) that are thought neces- sary for effective mass trauma intervention are safety and calmness (derived from trust), efficacy and hope (derived from community competence, economic development, and collective communica- tion), and connectedness (derived from mechanisms to augment natural social supports). These elements identified by both Hobfoll et al. and Norris and Stevens can also provide some direction for understanding resilience among crime victims, especially those involving community violence and other forms of violence vic- timization that have broad community impact. The ability of in- dividuals to adapt successfully following a crime victimization that occurs in a community context, that is observed by many innocent Journal of Traumatic Stress DOI 10.1002/jts. Published on behalf of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.