Using Participatory Methods to Engage Diverse Families in Research about Resilience in Middle Childhood

Background. Resilience entails drawing on resources to navigate adversity; few measures exist to explore how children cope with adversity in varying cultural contexts. Purpose. We aimed to develop a socially-inclusive measure of child resilience by (1) co-designing methods to engage diverse families, and (2) identifying resilience factors. Methods. We used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to recruit Aboriginal families, refugee families, and families from hospital outpatient clinics. To triangulate findings and codesign methods, we held discussion groups with 21 service providers. Codesigned group-based visual methods were employed in discussion groups with 97 parents and 106 children (5–12 years). Findings. Participants identified culturally-meaningful resilience factors such as loving family, speaking their home language (for families of Non-English speaking backgrounds). We discuss differences and commonalities across participant groups. Conclusion. Co-designing research that is both rigorous and inclusive is critical for gleaning culturally-meaningful data from diverse families.