Having access to standardized measures of resilience will enable a number of research questions
to be addressed. For example, how risk and protective processes operate with respect to specific
stressors remains unclear. One possibility is that very different constellations of psychosocial
processes may lie antecedent to the range of resilient outcomes considered in previous research.
Luthar et al. (1993) have shown that while some high-risk children show competence in one
domain, they often exhibit difficulties in other life domains. Indeed, it may be more useful to
accept specific definitions of resilience, such as social resilience, academic resilience or emotional
resilience as these may yield more detailed insights into development. If this were found to be the case, the question shaping research into resilience might better be stated as ‘‘What are the types of
processes via which particular attributes might moderate the effects of risk, with reference to a
specific aspect of competence’’ (Luthar, 1993 p. 451)?