Barriers to hope and adolescent resilience over time

Abstract

My study is a sub-study of the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) Project (ethics clearance, UP17/05/01). RYSE aims to better understand the resilience of youth who live in environments that are stressed by the petrochemical industry and its associated risks. Hope is a pathway of resilience. In particular, the purpose of my study was to explore over time which barriers to the experience of hope are identified by youths who live in a resource-constrained community. My qualitative study followed a phenomenological research design that used a Draw-and-Tell activity to generate data. In 2017, the RYSE participants generated data that explored barriers to hope. I repeated this process in my study in 2018 to investigate changes over time. I used inductive thematic analysis to analyse the 2018 data and deductive thematic analysis to make sense of the 2017 data. The following themes emerged from this analysis: negative social experiences, lack of resources to pursue dreams and gender norms limiting future selves. These themes, which were consistent over time, allowed for a rich understanding of the barriers to hope as identified by adolescents in a resource constrained context. The understanding of these barriers to hope has implications for educational psychologists who aim to develop preventative interventions to foster adolescent hope and resilience.