Multidimensional Stress and Resilience Measurement in Parents of Diverse Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status: Early Findings from a Community-Based Participatory Research Network Study of Preconception Health

The Community Child Health Network (CCHN) is a community collaborative network of five research sites (three urban, one rural, one suburban) formed to address disparities in child and maternal health. This paper describes the conceptualization and multidimensional measurement of stress and resilience within CCHN, including how these concepts were selected for study and the specific definitions used for a research study of a diverse community sample of adult parents of a newborn child. In this presentation, we will describe the multiple specific measures of stress and resilience that were used; the process of selecting, adapting, and scoring them, and we present results from our sample of 2448 African American, Latino, and non-Hispanic White mothers and 1349 fathers. Specifically, our findings include ethnic/racial variation and variation in socioeconomic indicators (e.g. below poverty level, near poverty level, and non-poor and education) in stress exposures (e.g. chronic stress, racism, interpersonal violence) and resilience resources (e.g,, mastery, social support, spirituality); associations among the various differing indicators; associations of stress and resilience with acculturation among Spanish language participants; and tests comparing mothers and fathers within couple associations on stress and resilience. These results are among the first to provide a detailed account of stress processes and resilience resources within a large community sample of men and women (and couples) of diverse ethnicity, a majority of whom are poor. Multi-dimensional approaches to studying stress and resilience in families are promising to advance an understanding base of health disparities that impact minority families across socio-economic levels.