Personality role in resilience promotion in children at risk by poverty

LEMOS, VIVIANA; RICHAUD DE MINZI, MARÍA CRISTINA

Berlín, Alemania

Simposio; XXIX International Congress of Psychology; 2008

German Federation of Psychological Associations, under the auspices of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS)

This paper attempts to show the importance of including a personality assessment when promoting resilience in poor children. At the same time, it attempts to establish whether there are significant differences in the coping process of risk children according to their disposition, and finally, whether personality works as a modulatory element of the impact in an intervention project (see footnote), by comparing the differences in the coping strategies used by children before and after such intervention. Sixty-seven poor children from the city of Paraná, Entre Ríos, were studied, who attend to one of the 1,000 most socially vulnerable schools of Argentina. The questionnaires used were the CAPI (Cuestionario Argentino de Personalidad Infantil, Lemos, 2004), in its adapted version for 6-8 year old children (Lemos, 2005), and a coping questionnaire (trial version), and the strategies used by the children were classified out of a story presenting a problematic situation, as proposed by Billing and Moos (1981). Multiple Analysis of Variance, multiple Regressions, mean contrasts and profile graphics studies were applied. The results showed specific coping styles related to certain features of personality, as well as the modulatory role of personality in the modification of specific coping styles after professional intervention, which is main goal is, precisely, to help children to improve, among others, their ability to restructuring the numerous conflict situations resulting from poverty, making them able to solve those situations in a proper way, thus favoring more functional coping styles. Key words: personality – coping – childhood – resiliency – poverty