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.
KeywordsAn Actor-Partner Interdependence Model on Family Resilience and Subjective Wellbeing
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