Fay-Anne M.

Pelagio
PSY15 – Current Issues and Trends in Psychology

A REVIEW OF THE ARTICLE

“MEASUREMENT AND ANTECEDENTS OF NATIONAL RESILIENCE IN
FILIPINO ADULTS DURING CORONAVIRUS CRISIS”
BY CARMELO CALLUENG et al.

INTRODUCTION
The year 2020 seems not yet done in giving surprises. A kind of surprise that no one will not dream
about. From the early months up to this time, when there are almost 2 months left before this year ends,
there are still postscripts. It is not over yet. This year seems like one of the more volatile years in recent
memory, according to David Matthews of New York Daily News (July 2020). Looking back, in the
Philippines, the first two months have been consumed by the Taal Volcanic Eruption that affects
thousands of individuals across CALABARZON, Metro Manila, and some parts of Central Luzon and
Ilocos Region. Months after, the threat of the Coronavirus spread across the country which is up to this
date still knocking us down. The Covid-19 pandemic became a global health issue that hits hard to the
country’s safety and economy. And the Philippines is swaying in terms of bouncing back. How the
Philippines will be able to bounce back if attempts have been dragged down again and again? How a
nation will stand up if has been constantly snagging down? Filipinos have always been romanticizing
their resilience. Filipinos surpass countless calamities and disasters, and the Philippines withstand various
sociopolitical conflicts but the Covid-19 pandemic is far different. This crisis turns the whole world
upside down. With that, it may question if Filipino resilience also represents the national resilience of the
Filipinos. In this article, we will review one of the first known studies of National Resilience (NR) in a
Filipino sample in the context of a pandemic.

ABSTRACT
The Measurement and antecedents of national resilience in Filipino adults during coronavirus crisis by C.
Callueng, J. Aruta, B. Antazo, and A. Briones-Diato was published in the Journal of Community
Psychology on August 26, 2020. The study was the first to attempt to determine the national resilience of
Filipinos. There is a bucket of related literature when it comes to resilience solely, but on national
resilience, there are very limited and nonexistence literature can be found which I think, one of the risks
and challenges faced by the researchers. The study is very timely, this kind of study can only be done at
this specific situation. The abstract has been presented empirically, stating the main objective of the study
with a precise declaration of the methods used and the results. This also gives a short but clear definition
of resilience and national resilience whereas, resilience is a broad concept that encompasses individual
and social resources to thrive from difficult circumstances and national resilience is a phenomenon in
which resilience occurs as a collective effort or country-wide. NR is the ability of a nation to deal with
crises while keeping its social fabric intact. It is one of the interesting studies that arise during this
pandemic. It is true that like the rest of the world, the Philippines has been greatly impacted by the
coronavirus pandemic, and an individual’s resilience alone, is not enough to bounce back. Because it is a
national pressing issue, it also requires a national approach to withstand as one.

BODY
The introduction of the study has an adequate introductory discussion of the problem by giving sufficient
information about the coronavirus disease. This discusses what probably the coronavirus disease is and
where and when it is originated from? How it is being transmitted? What are the possible symptoms? And
how this disease turns to be a pandemic. It also presented the global situation, how this disease resulted in
a massive loss of life, and how it is projected to trigger a global economic recession and increase the
number of individuals experiencing mental health concerns. The study also emphasized the current
situation in the Philippines, by giving local statistics and measures on how the current administration
address the national problem. It is only in the Philippines, where there are many community quarantine
categories such as ECQ, MECQ, GCQ, MGCQ, and many other community quarantine guidelines while
most of the other countries implemented a total lockdown only. If we have the guts to ask why, it simply
because our government has no guts to do it also. The Philippines is not a reach country in terms of funds
and profits it is rich then in corrupt officials. It may sound political but that is the unheard truth.
According to the study, the extreme adversity brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic can be a huge
threat to the stability and resilience of the Philippines. Right, because even though the Philippines has
experienced natural disasters and sociopolitical conflicts, it has never happened that a huge portion of the
country has been placed on lockdown. There were economic losses but only happened and experienced in
the affected area, there were still other areas that helped in economic sustainability. This is the first time
in Philippine history that most of the areas are affected simultaneously. The study is a pioneer in
examining perceptions of Filipinos on national resilience, this may contribute to the increasing empirical
interest in understanding the concept of NR at a level of global crisis such as the Covid-19.
According to the study, there are some previous studies used the National Resilience Assessment Scale to
measure the construct of NR. Some of those are the studies conducted by Kimhi, et. al, (2016) in which
he noted that the validity of NRAS was not adequately substantiated. Followed studies have been
conducted to fill the identified gap and replicated to different samples to establish its validity and
reliability and attempt to develop an efficient measure of NR, a validated short version of NRAS was
done (Kimhi et al., 2018). Literature reviews have comprehensively done by the researchers and pointed
out what researches is relevant to the study. The researcher also used to fill the gaps in the knowledge of
the past studies by attempting to determine the association with demographic profile and psychological
factors in the context of Filipino culture which probably a determinant of NR. Demographic factors have
a substantial influence on NR. Past studies have findings which indicated that gender was associated with
NR with males reporting a higher level of resilience that females and age were significantly and
positively correlated with NR. Suppressing factors such as distress, sense of anger, and perceived threat
were examined. Promoting factors as another determinant NR in this study comprises the individual
residence and community resilience. All of the reviewed literature has been presented concisely and used
logically to strengthen the identified determinants of NR.
The study claims that no research has been conducted on examining NR in the Philippines. The primary
goal of the study is to inquire into perceptions of NR in Filipinos during a pandemic. The research aims
and hypotheses are clearly defined and enumerated. To achieve the goal, two aims were proposed which
is examining the psychometric properties of the Filipino adaptation of the National Resilience Scale
(NRS-Filipino) and investigated a set of factors that can be associated with NR.

METHODOLOGY
The research methodology has been well-described and explained best for the fulfillment of the accurate
results of the study. Participants are described in terms of the sample profile, sample size, and sampling
techniques. The study of NR utilized a convenience sample of 401 adults residing in the Philippines.
More than half of the participants were females and single. Ages ranged from 18 to 68 years old. The
majority of the participants earned bachelor’s degrees and more than a third of the participants indicated
receiving higher than average income. Because of the current pandemic wherein, the social movement is
limited, the best suitable sampling technique for this study is convenient sampling, and based on the date
presented the participants were well educated. Internet is the main medium used for this study to become
attainable, and not just the common use of the internet which is social media, but the use of the google,
which is why it is not surprising that individuals who participated are those who have quite known of
google. The participants also represent higher than average income earners, probably because they are the
ones who have stable internet accessibility. Measures on national resilience, community resilience,
individual resilience, distress, perceived threat, sense of danger, demographic factors are presented clearly
with a concise and brief description. The psychometric properties of each scale were also presented
highlighting its reliability. NR was measured using the 16 items scale, 14 items adapted from the original
25-item NRAS (Kimhi, et al., 2019) and the remaining 2 items were developed by Shaul Kimhi and
colleagues to increase content relevance on coronavirus crisis. The instrument was adapted in Filipino and
answered in Likert response options ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), with a
higher score indicating a greater level of NR. Community resilience was measured utilizing the 20-item
Filipino version of the Conjoint Community Resilience Assessment Measure (CCRAM-10: Filipino) to
assess participant’s perceptions on the ability of a community to deal with a coronavirus crisis (Leykin et
al., 2013). The 10-item Filipino version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC 10: Filipino)
was used to measure a person’s capacity to effectively recover from the coronavirus (Campbell-Sills &
Stein, 2007; Connor & Davidson, 2003) or individual resilience. Distress, perceived threat, and sense of
danger were measured using the Filipino translated version of each respective inventory or scale of that
particular factor. The study secured the validity and reliability of the instrument, which best suit on
Filipino culture by translating the items from English to the Filipino language. The researcher followed
the double-translation and reconciliation procedure (International Test Commission, 2018) before the
survey was converted into an online format. Consent was obtained first before the participants completed
the online survey questionnaire. The study was part of the cross-national research approved by the
Institutional Review Board of the Tel Aviv University in Israel. Because Covid-19 spread across the
world, cross-national researches are very important to assess the psychometric properties of the scale
when measuring national resilience in the context of the pandemic. The study also required the
participants to provide demographic information such as age, place of residence which later coded as
either rural or urban based on the Philippine Statistics Authority classification (2010). It also includes the
awareness of the person(s) with coronavirus illness, religiosity, and political attitude.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The study presented the results and discussion scholarly. Statistical presentations were provided, to
describe the data logically and the datasets were treated with an appropriate statistical tool. Statistical
results were analyzed correctly and guided by the related literature that strengthens the suitability of the
statistical tool used. Most of the statistical tool used in this study was proven and tested fitted to the
research problem. The preliminary analyses indicated that NRS-Filipino scores were normally distributed
with skewness and kurtosis values consistently <|2|. The goodness of data-model fit was determined by
the use of a combination of absolute and incremental fit indices. The reliability of the NRS-Filipino
scores was calculated using item loadings to estimate the latent construct (H) coefficient (Mueller &
Hancock, 2008) and observed item scores to yield scale’s Cronbach coefficient. The convergent validity
was established by correlating subscale and total scores with criterion variables using Pearson correlation.
The study conducted a Sequential multiple regression analysis to determine the relative contribution of
demographic and psychological factors on total NR scores. The influence of dichotomous categorical
variables as possible determinants of NR was also analyzed in this study through series of one-way
analysis of variance to determine whether NR can be discriminate by participants’ gender, type of
residence, and awareness of a person infected by coronavirus within the community. The tables presented
were simple and summarize. Sufficient data effectively organized for a concise presentation of the results.
The way the results were presented addressed the gap identified in this study.
The reliability analyses of the NRS-Filipino subscale and total scores demonstrated strong internal
consistency. The significant relations of the NRS-Filipino subscale and total scores to relevant
psychological measures supported convergent validity. The results of the study indicated that the NRS-
Filipino could be utilized to assess the NR of Filipino during extreme adversities like the coronavirus
crisis. The study can also contribute to closing the gap on the dearth of valid and practical tools to
measure NR internationally. The researchers were able to confirm their hypothesis that NRS-Filipino is a
valid and reliable multidimensional measure of NR. Findings on the antecedents of NR partially
supported their hypothesis that demographic variables were significantly associated with NR. But, overall
the study found several demographic and psychological factors as antecedents of NR during the
coronavirus crisis in the Philippines, which were also consistent with findings from previous research in
other countries (Eshel et al., 2020; Kimhi et al., 2019, 2018). The study highlights that community
resilience and political attitudes were the strongest predictors of the NR in the Philippines. According to
this study, it is not surprising that Filipinos perceived their local community as resilient same as the
Philippines in general. The Filipinos hope that the country will be able to withstand this crisis despite
shortcomings and the Philippines will effectively withstand the Covid-19 pandemic.

CONCLUSION
The Measurement and antecedents of national resilience in Filipino adults during coronavirus crisis by C.
Callueng, J. Aruta, B. Antazo, and A. Briones-Diato was one of the studies we can badge as highly
significant on this time of the pandemic. Resilience is very crucial in this extreme adversity and plays a
significant role in how we can be able to surpass this crisis as an individual and mostly as a nation. The
Philippines proved countless times its resiliency but, this pandemic is far different from the past
experiences of the country. In this time period, national resilience is a must. The study is very beneficial
to the field of research most especially in the study of NR in Filipino and in the context of a pandemic.
The researchers made a huge success in conducting this study and this will be a good reference for future
researches. And because this study was conducted during the early phase of community quarantine, the
findings cannot be generalized. The researchers acknowledge some of the methodological limitations of
the study which suggests future research. Overall, the findings of this study regarding the measurement
and antecedents of NR are promising. This gives us, insights on the national resilience in Filipino adults.

REFERENCE

Callueng, C., Aruta, J. J., Antazo, B. G., & Briones‐Diato, A. (2020). Measurement and antecedents
_____of national resilience in Filipino adults during coronavirus crisis. Journal of Community
_____Psychology, 48(8), 2608-2624. doi:10.1002/jcop.22438. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.w
_____iley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcop.22438