The Resilience Research Programme by Dr. Derek Roger
The History
The research programme began at the University of York in the UK in the early 1980s, stimulated by the differences that emerged between people in response to disasters: while some people suffer debilitating emotional and physical effects afterwards, others adapt much more quickly and have few significant after-effects. If events can be accorded ‘stress quotients’ then everyone should react in the same way to the same situation, but they don’t.
Opposite approach
Our research took the opposite approach, seeking instead to uncover the differences amongst individuals that made them more or less susceptible. Based on my expertise in psychometrics we set about constructing measures of the key personality factors that might be involved. Rather than imposing theoretical assumptions on the process, we created items for the scales by asking a large random sample to say how they would think, act and feel in a series of emotional scenarios. This yielded an initial pool of items that reflected how people would actually respond, expressed in the vernacular. After excluding duplications the provisional items were cast into a dichotomised format, which avoids the regression to the mean incurred by scaled items, and the responses of a large random sample were subjected to exploratory factor analysis.
The Emotion Control Questionnaire
We called the final scale the Emotion Control Questionnaire (ECQ – Roger & Nesshoever, 1987), which comprised four factors: Rehearsal, Emotional Inhibition, Aggression Control and Benign Control. Rehearsal measured a preoccupation with emotional upset, and the label was used because the items were predominantly oriented towards the future. An expanded version of the scale designed to sample a wider range of retrospective items provided a similar four-factor structure (Roger & Najarian, 1989), and the Rehearsal scale was subsequently re-named Rumination to reflect the wider perspective. Confirmatory factor analysis of the revised scale indicated a 3-factor fit which grouped Aggression Control and Benign Control together, and validation studies showed that these last two scales form part of the extraversion constellation. They are not related to resilience measures, and subsequent work in the programme has focused on Rumination and Emotional Inhibition.
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
Since inhibition was thought at the time to be implicated in stress we were not surprised that Emotional Inhibition had emerged from the scenario exercise, but the role of Rumination was unclear - the ECQ scale was the first published validated psychometric scale for assessing rumination. A series of studies were then conducted, with the validation criteria based on physiological response mechanisms. In the stress literature adrenaline and cortisol are commonly described as ‘stress hormones’, and the experiments therefore focused on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (h-p-a) axis.
Eureka moment
The experiments involved both naturalistic and laboratory studies. For example, in one series participants were exposed to lab stressors while monitoring their cardiovascular reactions such as blood pressure and heart-rate. Comparing recovery rates after exposure showed a significant effect for Rumination, with habitual ruminators taking significantly longer to recover (Roger & Jamieson, 1988). This was our Eureka moment: the only appropriate way to define stress is rumination. Adrenaline is not a stress hormone at all, and the ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction is a perfectly adaptive response to demand. What makes it maladaptive amongst ruminators is its continued and prolonged activation when there is nothing to respond to except ruminative thoughts – ‘what-ifs’ and ‘if-onlys’, which serve to maintain inappropriate adrenal activation. All that events do is to provide something to ruminate about, if you choose to do so.
The same can be said for cortisol. Naturalistic studies included assaying urinary-free cortisol amongst student nurses immediately after an important written exam, and comparing that with baseline cortisol; again, chronic ruminators showed an exaggerated cortisol response (Roger & Najarian, 1998). Cortisol is implicated in a range of physiological responses, but the cost to health is that sustained cortisol secretion can lead to compromised immune function. Studies at the University of Aarhus in Denmark showed that scores on ECQ Rumination were significantly related to measures of immune function (Thomsen, Mehlsen, Hokland, Viidik, Olesen, Avlund, Munk & Zachariae, 2004). Other studies using the ECQ have shown significant effects of Rumination and Emotional Inhibition on anticipatory muscle tension and on post-partum analgesic use (Nieland & Roger, 1993; Kaiser, Hinton, Krohne, Stewart & Burton, 1995), and in addition to health implications, using the ECQ in forensic settings has shown that they are also involved in regulating offender behaviour (McDougall, Venables and Roger, 1991; Roger and Masters, 1997).
Central role of Rumination
Having established the central role of Rumination in stress, subsequent research at the Stress Research Unit which I directed at York was extended to explore the moderating role of other personality factors. These included a revision of the misleading concept of Type-A Behaviour, generating a new approach to assessing coping styles, revising measures of social support, constructing a new measure of neuroticism based on emotional style, and investigating the role of uncertainty, self-esteem and optimism/pessimism (Birks & Roger, 2000; Roger, Jarvis & Najarian, 1993; Lyne & Roger, 2000; Guarino & Roger, 2002; Forbes & Roger, 1999; Greco & Roger, 2001; Olason & Roger, 2001; Rector & Roger, 1997).
Adaptations of these measures are incorporated into the Challenge of Change Resilience training programme in the pre-training Challenge of Change Profile. All of the measures reflect behaviours that can be modified and changed, and the Profile provides participants in the evidence-based training programme with a clear assessment of where the work needs to be focused.
To read the latest updates on the research click here.
"...our workforce is better prepared for and able to cope with change."
"People gained that 'feeling' of being in control..."
"...some staff have referred to it as 'life changing'..."
