Profiles of Personal Resiliency for Normative and Clinical Samples of Youth Assessed by the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents

Cluster analyses with the three global scores of the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents™ (RSCA) were used to determine personal resiliency profiles within normative (641) and outpatient clinical (285) samples of youth aged 9 to 18 years. Normative and clinical profiles were compared with each other and the clinical profiles were then compared with profiles previously found for an inpatient psychiatric sample. Three profiles were identified for the normative sample indicating high resiliency (31%), average resiliency (44%), and low resource vulnerability (25%). The four profiles that were found in the predominately outpatient sample matched Kumar et al.'s profiles and represented average resiliency (23%), low resource vulnerability (26%), high vulnerability (31%), and very high vulnerability (20%). Comparison of the normative and outpatient clinical samples indicated differences in resiliency profiles as well as overlap. Implications for preventive screening and treatment of youth are discussed.