Resilience Interventions in Higher Education: Surveying the Research Landscape

Resilience programming in higher education is gaining visibility in the public sphere and developing a growing evidence base. A recent online database search, however, failed to uncover any formal reviews examining the current body of research for resilience-related interventions designed specifically for university students. To fill this identified gap, we are conducting a systematic scoping review (Arksey & O’Malley, 2002; Colquhoun et al., 2014) to map the research literature landscape for resilience interventions targeting this student population. The specific objectives of our review are to: 1) identify the range and nature of resilience-related interventions (programming and courses) for university students, 2) identify the range of reported outcomes related to these interventions, and 3) identify the range of methods and outcome measures utilized in this research realm. We screened 1123 potential papers via an online database search of CINAHL Complete, Academic Search Complete, Education Source, ERIC, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Social Work Abstracts. Twenty-five papers examining resiliencerelated interventions for university student populations met final inclusion criteria for our review. This body of research includes a range of interventions including mindfulness training, psychological capital intervention, art programs, and academic courses. Research methods included both quantitative and qualitative approaches and utilization of a range of resilience scales. Our session will focus on disseminating scoping review findings including: scope of evidence-supported interventions, scope of outcome measures utilized, range of outcomes described, and identification of student sub-populations for which resilience interventions have been developed. We will describe patterns in these results and emphasize their implications for resilience-related program development in higher education and future research.