QRS Discussion/QRS-A VictimologyPaper details:Attached is the article, directions, and this chapter’s notes if needed.AssignmentsThere will be2QRS Discussion Assignments, worth 10 points each. These will coincide with the2 researcharticles (A & B) that I will provide in the Content section of D2L. See grading rubricbelow.QRS stands for Question, Reaction, Summary. Through QRS, you will engage in higher order thinking skills by(1)Reading a research article; (2) Extracting central concepts; (3) Recognizing areas where your understandingof the reading is weak; (4) Formulating specific questions; (5) Critically analyzing the data supportingcentralconcepts in the research article; and (6) Relating content from the article to previous knowledge learned in class.Q stands for Questions. These are questions that occur to you when you’re reading the research article. Youshould write these questions down as they arise.R represents Reaction.This is your emotional response to the reading. Did you like it or dislike it? Was itconfusing or easy to understand? There is a documented link between emotion and memory. Thus, by thinkingabout your emotional reaction to the research article you are promoting retention of the information.S signifies Summary. You will write a brief summary of what you think are the most important points for youto acquire upon reading the research article. What is the takeaway?For each QRS Discussion Assignment, you will start by reading the assigned research article. You will likelyneed to read the article more than one time to fully comprehend it. Then, you will identify questions that occurto you while reading the article. Then, you will prepare an emotional reaction to the research article. Lastly, youwill prepare a brief but thorough summary of what you think are the most important points of the researcharticle. All parts of this assignment should be typed into a Microsoft Word document that is no less than onepage long, single–spaced, but no more than two pages long, single–spaced. After running spell and grammarcheck, and proofreading, then copy and paste your assignment into the appropriate D2L discussionforum. Yourresponse will be visible to your classmates.You will not be able to view your classmates’ QRS DiscussionAssignments until you submit your posting.After submitting your QRS Discussion Assignment into the D2Ldiscussion forum, take the opportunity to view your classmates’ responses.GradingRubric forQRSDiscussionAssignmentsPoints1086QualityAndContentInsightful questions, a thoroughand honest description ofstudent’s emotional reaction tothe reading, and a detailedsummary in whichthe mostsalient points of the reading areidentifiedExcellent questions, but thereaction section lacks depth ofself–evaluation or the summarysection does not include one ormore major ideas from thereadingCursory questions that clearlyrepresent a lack of depth ofthought, reactions andsummaries are weak or absentFormatNo less than one page,andnomore than two pages, singlespaced, no grammar orspellingerrors, all words/ideas borrowedfrom sources accuratelyparaphrased and cited in APAstyleNo less than one page, no morethan two pages, single spaced,few grammar orspellingerrors, all words/ideasborrowed from sourcesaccurately paraphrased, but notcited in APA styleClose to one page,singlespaced, several grammar orspelling errors, all words/ideasborrowed from sources notaccurately paraphrased or citedin APA styleJournal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2010, pp. 215–222 (C©2010)Resilience and Crime VictimizationMary Ann Dutton and Rebecca GreeneGeorgetown University Medical CenterWhat do we know about resilience in crime victimization? In this article, the authors discuss resilience definedas protective factors (e.g., personality characteristics, biological characteristics, social and cultural factors, andcommunity characteristics); as a process of adaptation (e.g., self-enhancement, positive cognitive appraisals, copingstyles, and spirituality), including an iterative perspective on resilience as a cascade of protective processes; and aspositive outcomes (e.g., lack of symptoms) following exposure to adverse events. Within each of these definitionalframeworks, they consider general conceptual issues pertaining to resilience and then the small body of researchthat has focused specifically on resilience and some type of crime victimization. Research and clinical implicationsare discussed.What does resilience mean in the face of crime victimization?Why do some people seem to rebound after being robbed, mugged,or even sexually assaulted, whereas others experience a downwardspiral of adverse mental and physical health? Efforts to understandthe aftermath of adversity such as crime victimization, and traumaexposure in general, have focused largely on psychopathology. Lit-tle attention has been paid to the fact that many people adjustquite well despite crime victimization and to understanding the re-silience that this suggests. These individual differences in the wayspeople are affected by crime victimization further underscore theneed to expand our understanding of resilience. Better knowledgeof resilience can inform new approaches for enhancing pathwaysto positive outcomes following victimization by crime. Specifically,what resources might be integrated into both the criminal justiceand health care systems—institutions that victims already navigatein the aftermath of crime—that might enhance resilience in boththe short- and the long-term?There is, as yet, no single coherent conceptual framework toguide resilience research. As Masten pointed out (2007),There is a long history of controversy about the meaning ofresilience and how to operationalize it. . . including debatesabout whether resilience is best defined as a trait, a process,an outcome, a pattern of life course development, narrow orbroad, multifaceted or unidimensional, short- or long-term,and whether resilience should encompass recovery as well asresistance, internal as well as external adaptive functioning,and external as well as internal resources. (p. 924)We consider three different approaches to the definition of re-silience. We discuss resilience defined as protective factors (e.g.,Mary Ann Dutton, Rebecca Greene, Georgetown Medical Center.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary Ann Dutton, 620 KoberCogan Hall, Washington, DC. E-mail: mad27@georgetown.edu.C©2010 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Published online in Wiley Inter-Science (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jts.20510personality characteristics, biological characteristics, social andcultural factors, and community characteristics); as a process ofadaptation (e.g., self-enhancement, positive cognitive appraisals,coping styles, and spirituality), including an iterative perspectiveon resilience as a cascade of protective processes; and as positiveoutcomes (e.g., lack of symptoms) following exposure to adverseevents. Within each of these definitional frameworks defining re-silience, we consider first generalization of conceptual issues andthen the small body of research that has focused specifically onsome type of crime victimization.We included studies in this review that measured resiliencein some way. We also focused on resilience following crimevictimization involving individual perpetrator(s) against individ-ual victims. The literature involving torture, terrorism, or othermass trauma and combat are beyond the scope of this article.We searched PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/),PsycINFO (http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/), and the PILOTSdatabase (Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress;http://www.ptsd.va.gov) and selected articles with the word “re-silience” or “resiliency” associated with some form of crime vic-timization. We included in the review those articles that met thefollowing criteria: (1) empirical research with adults who had beena victim of a crime, (2) at least one research question that explicitlyconsidered resilience or resiliency in relation to crime victimiza-tion, (3) research that included at least one standardized mea-sure defining resilience or resiliency and (4) research published inEnglish.RESILIENCE AS PROTECTIVE FACTORSResilience has been understood as a matter of character, dispo-sition, or endowment that is protective in the face of exposureto adverse or traumatic events. From this perspective, resilienceconsists of a set of factors that exist—in some dynamic or staticmanner—prior to crime victimization and that enhances positive215216Dutton and Greeneadaptation and protects against adverse outcomes. Here we con-sider not only individual (e.g., personality, biological, and so-cial/cultural characteristics, prior trauma history), but also com-munity characteristics that contribute to resilience.A number of individual personality factors have been identifiedas protective in the face of both acute and chronic adverse situ-ations. Many of these are linked to extroverted personality char-acteristics, for example, hardiness (Kobasa, 1979). According to arecent review (Agaibi & Wilson, 2005), hardiness leads to betteroutcomes following exposure to stress because hardy individualsappraise threatening situations as less distressing, are more confi-dent, and thus, better able to use active coping and engage socialsupport. Other personality characteristics that are associated withresilience include internal locus of control, self-esteem, altruism,and ego defense (Agaibi & Wilson, 2005).Resiliency has also been associated with an individual’s biologi-cal characteristics. The potential links between biological processesand resilience are many. Broad domains of biological processes thatare potentially related to resilience include (1) neural plasticity ofbrain structure and function, (2) emotional reactivity (e.g., star-tle reflex, hemispheric electroencephalogram reactivity), (3) hemi-spheric asymmetry, (4) neuroendocrine systems, and (5) immuno-logical systems focused extensively on the role of dysregulation inthe hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, especially in the devel-opment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression.Further, preliminary studies have shown several compounds tobe related to resilience following exposure to extreme stress. Neu-ropeptide Y, a peptide that is thought to function as an anxiolytic instressful situations (Yehuda, Flory, Southwick, & Charney, 2006),is one example. Allopregnanolone is a also a potential resiliency fac-tor that has been associated with PTSD (Hoge, Austin, & Pollack,2007), known to counteract the effects of reduced y-amino-butyricacid A following stress.Genetic markers are another factor to be considered in the com-plex array of resiliency. Stein, Campbell-Sills, and Gelernter (2009)defined emotional resilience as the ability to maintain healthy andstable levels of psychological functioning in the wake of stress andtrauma, and they hypothesize that genetic factors confer protec-tion in the face of adversity, although no specific genetic factorsfor resilience have been identified definitively. However, in a studyof 423 college students (Stein et al., 2009), resilience measuredby the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson,2003) was associated with the short variant of a polymorphismin the promoter of the serotonin transporter gene (gene,SLC6A4;variant, 5HTTLPR) and, thus, is a prime candidate for a resiliencegene. That is, variation in 5HTTLPR is associated with individ-ual differences in emotional resilience, an individual’s ability towithstand and bounce back from stress.A range of social and cultural factors have been associated withresilience, including gender, age, race and ethnicity, social supportnetworks, and prior trauma history. These factors may operate indifferent ways, either directly or moderating the effects of crimevictimization by interacting with various other mechanisms ofaction. Research on gender has shown inconsistent associationswith resilience, with women shown to be at greater risk than men(Breslau, Chilcoat, Kessler, Peterson, & Lucia, 1999; Mancini &Bonanno, 2006), although in a study of child abuse and neglect,Widom and her colleagues (DuMont, Widom, & Czaja, 2007)found that women were more likely to be resilient across multipledomains of functioning in both adolescence and young adulthood.The results for ethnicity and race are also mixed. An Israeli studyfound Arabs to be almost six times less likely to be trauma stressresilient compared to Israeli citizens (Bleich, Gelkopf, Melamed,& Solomon, 2006). DuMont and colleagues (2007) found thatnon-Hispanic Whites were less likely to be classified as resilientadolescence, but no effect was found in young adulthood.Social support has widely been recognized as important for re-silience in studies of depressed mothers who were survivors of childsexual abuse (Wright, Fopma-Loy, & Fischer, 2005), firefighters(North et al., 2002; Regehr, Hill, & Glancy, 2000), canine rescuehandlers after the 9/11 terrorist attack (Alvarez & Hunt, 2005),and adults who were abused and neglected as children (DuMontet al., 2007).Resiliency has not only been attributed to individuals, but tocommunities and social networks that can promote resilience inindividuals (Harvey, 2007). Community characteristics may beparticularly relevant when crime victimization affects large com-munities, such as in the 2003 sniper shooting in the Washington,DC area involving John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, wherevictims appeared to be targeted at random within a relativelylarge geographic area. Another, more recent, example are the Ft.Hood shootings where the military community and the Iraq andAfghanistan wars provide a unique context that contributes to theresilience of family members who lost a loved one in the shootings,as well as to other members of the military community at Ft. Hoodand elsewhere.Norris and Stevens (2007) discuss the adaptive community ca-pacities underlying “community resilience”, (1) trusted sources ofinformation and effective communication; (2) community com-petence, economic development, and collective communicationabout the trauma; and (3) mechanisms to augment natural socialsupports of family and friends (to promote connectedness). Fiveelements described by Hobfoll et al. (2007) that are thought neces-sary for effective mass trauma intervention are safety and calmness(derived from trust), efficacy and hope (derived from communitycompetence, economic development, and collective communica-tion), and connectedness (derived from mechanisms to augmentnatural social supports). These elements identified by both Hobfollet al. and Norris and Stevens can also provide some direction forunderstanding resilience among crime victims, especially thoseinvolving community violence and other forms of violence vic-timization that have broad community impact. The ability of in-dividuals to adapt successfully following a crime victimization thatoccurs in a community context, that is observed by many innocentJournal of Traumatic StressDOI 10.1002/jts. Published on behalf of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.