TITLE:
An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model on Family Resilience and Subjective Wellbeing
AUTHORS:
Anna H. C. Neo, Weining C. Chang, Daniel S. S. Fung
KEYWORDS:
An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model on Family Resilience and Subjective Wellbeing
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.7 No.6,
June
22,
2016
ABSTRACT: In times of crisis the family often react
together as a unit of response, as though a combat unit. The concept of family
resilience has been identified as a coping resource for the family unit even if
the crisis affected only one individual of the family. Family resilience works
in concert with individual psychological resilience to protect the individual
from excess negative impact and to improve positive outcomes such as subjective
wellbeing. However, the impact of family resilience on the adaptive outcome is
far more complex than individual resilience. The present study aims to identify
the internal dynamics between the individual actor and her familial partner,
using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. A total of 38 family dyads, each
pair consisted of a hospital nurse and one of her family members participated
in the present study. Among them are 49 females and 27 males, with mean age of
40.62 years old. The nurses were recruited from two major public hospitals that
admitted patients and patients suspected of being infected with an infectious
disease during a pandemic out-break. The family members were 2 parents, 24
spouse, 6 siblings, and 6 children of the nurses. Main effects of actor’s
resilience and partner’s resilience, as well as interaction effect between
actor’s and partner’s resilience, on actor’s subjective wellbeing, were found.
This suggests interdependence effects of individual’s resilience and the other
party’s wellbeing. Results indicated that the 1) the
multifaceted-multi-processed family resilience affects the individual outcomes
in different ways: Family resilience of familial process and function showed
only actor effect on individual subjective wellbeing, family resilience of
shared beliefs and emotional regulation however showed actor and partner
effects and with the partner showed higher effect. 2) The hypothesis on
interdependence effects was supported for the family resilience dimensions of
meaning-making and emotional regulation.