Infurna, F.J., & Luthar, S.S. (2017). The multidimensional nature of resilience to spousal loss. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(6), 926-947. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000095.
Spousal loss can result in a variety of adjustment difficulties across different aspects of functioning, yet much previous research on resilience to bereavement focused on single measures of adjustment. In this study, the authors examined concordance across five different trajectories of resilience indices: life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, general health and physical functioning. They also looked at the role of potential vulnerability and protective factors that might exacerbate or reduce the negative effects of spousal loss. Those factors included expecting someone to offer them comfort when in distress (also referred to as “reliable comfort”), social connectedness, and engagement in everyday role activities, along with sociodemographic indices of age, gender, and education.
For this study, data from 421 participants who experienced spousal loss was taken from the larger Household Income and Labor Dynamics of Australia Study, a nationally representative annual panel study of households and their residents that began in 2001. Data was collected each year from household members aged 15 and older using a mixture of in-person and telephone interviews and self-completed questionnaires. At the time of spousal loss, participants’ average age was 69 years old, 71% were female and education ranged from less than high school to postgraduate degrees. Growth mixture modeling analyses using observations from both five years before and five years after spousal loss were conducted to ensure enough time had occurred to track change and enough statistical power to detect between-person differences in levels and rates of change.
Results demonstrated a wide range of percentages of individuals displaying resilient trajectories across the adjustment indices:
- 66% for life satisfaction
- 26% for positive affect
- 19% for negative affect
- 37% for perceptions of general health
- 28% for physical functioning
Only 8% of individuals showed resilience across all five dimensions and as many as 20% showed a non-resilient trajectory across all five. With respect to protective factors, being able to maintain one’s social connectedness with friends and family was strongly associated with resilience as was continued engagement in everyday life-role activities. Further, the anticipation that they would receive solace or comfort at times of distress was a significant protective factor. Resilience was not associated with age or education level in this study, but in the group that did not manifest resilience in any of the domain areas, females outnumbered males three to one.