The effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Students' Well-being and Resilience

Abstract

This paper intends to determine the extent to which well-being, resilience, emotional intelligence and experiencing difficult situations interact with each other in the school population and whether experiencing each one of the thirteen difficult situations analyzed (e.g., death of a parent, divorce of parents, domestic violence, violence by colleagues) causes significant differences in terms of resilience and well-being between children who had been exposed to it and children who had not. The present study was quantitative research that included a sample of 845 children from primary to high school (55 % girls and 45% boys) aged between 8 and 18 years (M=13.5). Results of correlation analysis show that there is a positive relationship between emotional intelligence, well-being and resilience, and a negative correlation between experiencing difficult situations, students' well-being, and the level of resilience they reported. Furthermore, the T-test was used to do a hierarchy of difficult situations depending on the effect that their experience has on well-being and resilience. In terms of well-being, this was most influenced by family violence, violence from colleagues and parental divorce. On the other hand, for resilience, the effect was strongest in the case of family violence, followed by famine and violence from colleagues.