Climate change forecasts tell of significant challenges ahead for agrifood systems at all scales, from global to highly local. Farmers are often at the forefront of these challenges. How farmers perceive climate related risks, and the actions they take to protect or adapt their lives and livelihoods are therefore a critical area of inquiry. The purpose of this dissertation is to describe how farmers in Vermont, in the Northeastern U.S., think about climate change, and how their experiences and perceptions influence engagement with adaptation or mitigation activities. To this end, my research questions included: (1) what are farmers already doing to address climate impacts on their farms? (2) Do farmers perceive climate change to be a risk, and if so what are they doing to address it? (3) Are farmers and agricultural technical service providers in agreement about the current performance of climate change adaptation strategies? (4) Can a qualitative typology of farmers describe the degree to which they are resilient in the face of climate change? I conducted this research in the context of a larger, collaborative effort called the Vermont Agricultural Resilience in a Changing Climate Initiative (VAR), based at the University of Vermont. VAR served as an umbrella for transdisciplinary, participatory action research activities that capitalized on a diversity of perspectives and expertise, including the embedded knowledge of farmers and agricultural technical service providers. The VAR team as a whole and in sub-teams utilized a selection of research approaches including preliminary research activities that contributed to the development of research questions addressed in this dissertation, and primary research approaches used to answer those questions. This dissertation report consists of the following chapters: Chapters 1-2 present and introduction and background information related to climate change and agriculture, including a review of national, regional and site conditions as well as an overview of research purpose, approaches, methods, and theoretical frameworks applicable to the exploration of the questions and interpretation of findings. Chapters 3-6 address the following topics: (1) a case study in transdisciplinary participatory action research applied to climate change and agriculture in Vermont, (2) an analysis of farmer perceptions of climate related risk and associated on-farm adaptation strategies, (3) a report of farmer perceptions of climate change and comparison of farmer and technical service provider evaluations of potential climate change best management practices, and (4) a qualitative typology of farmer resilience. This research is some of the first to address these topics from the perspective of farmers in the Northeastern U.S. Through these chapters, an important story is told about role that climate change plays in farm management today. The broader application of these findings is in the design of thoughtful programming and policies that support agrifood system resilience. I argue that social programs and policies that address agriculture and climate change should be informed by the experiences of farmers. When we weave together the knowledge of agricultural practitioners and our best scientific knowledge, we can better prepare for the changes in agrifood systems that a changing climate will require of us.

The term "governance" encompasses both governmental and nongovernmental participation in collective choice and action. Law dictates the structure, boundaries, rules, and processes within which governmental action takes place, and in doing so becomes one of the focal points for analysis of barriers to adaptation as the effects of climate change are felt. Adaptive governance must therefore contemplate a level of flexibility and evolution in governmental action beyond that currently found in the heavily administrative governments of many democracies. Nevertheless, over time, law itself has proven highly adaptive in western systems of government, evolving to address and even facilitate the emergence of new social norms (such as the rights of women and minorities) or to provide remedies for emerging problems (such as pollution). Thus, there is no question that law can adapt, evolve, and be reformed to make room for adaptive governance. In doing this, not only may barriers be removed, but law may be adjusted to facilitate adaptive governance and to aid in institutionalizing new and emerging approaches to governance. The key is to do so in a way that also enhances legitimacy, accountability, and justice, or else such reforms will never be adopted by democratic societies, or if adopted, will destabilize those societies. By identifying those aspects of the frameworks for adaptive governance reviewed in the introduction to this special feature relevant to the legal system, we present guidelines for evaluating the role of law in environmental governance to identify the ways in which law can be used, adapted, and reformed to facilitate adaptive governance and to do so in a way that enhances the legitimacy of governmental action.

This thesis provides a critical review of the Transition movement, a grassroots response to peak oil and climate change, co-founded by this author. It focuses on two key aspects of the Transition approach, resilience and economic relocalisation, with the aim of analysing whether and how they can be implemented in a locality based on the Transition approach, and assessing what socio-economic and community-related structures would be necessary to implement such a process. The focus of the research is Totnes, Devon, which because of its status as the UK’s first Transition initiative and the longer history of various initiatives to promote local resilience, offers a valuable case study of attempts to practically implement resilience and localisation. A variety of research methods were employed, including surveys, focus groups, oral history and in-depth interviews, as well less conventional public participation methods such as Open Space and World Café. The first major finding was that Transition Town Totnes (TTT) has become a significant organisation in the town, with a high level of popular support. It was also found that the obstacles to resilience and relocalisation lie not, as was hypothesised, in a lack of skills or an absence of community cohesion, but in issues of governance and the need for increased social entrepreneurship. It was found that what researchers call the ‘Value Action Gap’ (i.e. the gap between people’s declared sympathies and intentions and their actions) exists in Totnes as much as anywhere else, but that some of TTT’s projects, such as ‘Transition Together’, are working imaginatively to overcome this and to reduce emissions. From this evidence is it concluded that Transition’s approach towards relocalisation and reducing carbon emissions can be argued to be effective in, generating engagement and initiating new enterprises. Like other ‘green’ initiatives, it struggles to engage those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, but some of its initiatives are showing promise for overcoming this. Its primary contribution is in suggesting a redefining of resilience, not as a state of preparedness for disaster, but as a desired characteristic of a sustainable society. A more resilient community, it is argued, would be one more in control of its food and energy production, as well as being one that enables inward financial investment. It also argues that the government focus on ‘localism’, the devolving of political power to the local level, ought to be expanded to include ‘localisation’, the strengthening of local production to meet local needs, a shift which would financially benefit local communities. It argues that the key challenge for Transition initiatives such as TTT is going to be scaling up from being ‘niche’ organisations to become economically viable organisations with a broad appeal and engagement, and also articulates the need for ‘Resilience Indicators’ which would allow communities to measure the degree to which their levels of resilience are increasing.

The relationship between psychological hardiness and individuals' coping with two life events, involuntary job loss and post-parental launching of adolescent children, was investigated in a sample of 146 adults, 83 of which had experienced job loss and 61 of which had experienced the empty nest. Volunteers completed questionnaires which measured hardiness, distress, coping strategies, neuroticism, and extraversion. Multivariate analyses were performed, both with and without covariates, for overall hardiness as well as the hardiness subscales of control, commitment, and challenge. Significant hardiness by life event interactions on escape-avoidance coping were found in both sets of analyses. Main effects for hardiness, however, disappeared when controls for neuroticism and extraversion were utilized. Findings underscore the necessity of employing neuroticism controls in future hardiness research.

Resilience is the ability to survive and persevere during difficult times. Resilient people also thrive after overcoming adversity. Adolescents have many developmental tasks to overcome in their quest to becoming adults. Difficulty with these tasks can lead to academic and personal failures. Adolescents with low resilience often struggle with low self-esteem. If students are identified early as having lower levels of resilience, professional school counselors have an opportunity to provide resilience-enhancing activities. Prior to middle school, students are assigned all of their classes. During middle school, students begin to select their elective courses which may be representative of their interests and current emotional status. By looking at students' elective courses, I looked for patterns of resilience that may help professional school counselors proactively identify students in need of additional guidance in order to be academically successful. This study utilized a convenience sample of middle school students enrolled in the 8th grade (N = 190) of a large suburban school district located in the southwest United States to measure levels of resilience and elective course enrollment. Gender of the participants was 107 females and 83 males. The students reported their ethnicity as 5.8% African American/Black, 11.1% Asian, 12.6% Hispanic, 1.1% Native American, 1.6% Pacific Islander, 59.5% Caucasian/White, and 8.4% multiracial. I measured resilience in this study using the Resilience Scale and comparisons based on elective course. Data analyses include descriptive statistics and ANOVAs. Based on a statistical significance criterion of p < .05, students enrolled in athletics scored significantly higher in resilience than did non-athletics students enrolled in physical education/outdoor education (p = .035). Additionally, Caucasian females were significantly less resilient than Caucasian males (p = .031). Limitations of the study, implications of the results for practice, and recommendations for future research are presented.

The justice system in the east-African country Kenya has long been subject to severe corruption and lengthy bureaucracy.  Both historical and current injustices have been left unattended and unaddressed, obstructing community resilience. This has lead to the development of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms that often build on traditional practices. In this study the ADR of restorative justice is examined. The study seeks to explore the relationship between the informal practice of restorative justice and the social dimensions of community resilience in the rural communities of Nakuru County in western Kenya. By merging questions on the practice of restorative justice with indicators of community resilience the study has found that the informal practice of restorative justice indeed has links to the shaping of community resilience. The practice has enabled dialogue between different ethnic groups. This has facilitated reconciliation and healing of trauma partly because new narratives have formed and partly because the culture of silence has been broken allowing people to share testimonies of violence and conflict. The study has also informed the community resilience field on the importance for collectivistic communities to have historical and ancestral events honoured, shared and addressed in order to fully enable conditions under which community resilience can form. However the practice shows ambiguous tendencies when it comes to inclusion of all members of society as community elders’ possesses a lot of power over the process, partially restricting community resilience to form.

The Alliance for Excellent Education (2011) estimates every 26 seconds in America, a student drops out of school. Numerous intervention and prevention approaches have been implemented to reduce the incidents of school dropout. One program, Communities In Schools (CIS), has shown promise in impacting the issue of school dropout by attending to both academic and non-academic factors at play in influencing a student’s risk for dropping out. The primary aim of this secondary data analysis was to develop an increased understanding of CIS services, to explore whether service provision varies systematically in relation to student outcomes and student characteristics, and to gain initial understandings of whether service provision is related to end-of-year outcomes. The volume of services provided was examined in terms of the number of service categories received and the amount of services (in hours) received. Bivariate statistical tests were used to examine the differences in the two service volumes based on student characteristics and prior year outcomes. The findings suggest that the total number of services received and the total number of hours of services received does not significantly vary by student characteristics or prior year outcomes. However, significant differences were found in the number of hours of distinct service categories and prior year outcomes. Multiple regression analyses were employed to examine in what ways services were related to student outcomes. The findings indicate that specific services are associated with better outcomes. Practice and future research implications are discussed.

The major purposes of this study were to determine the relationships among resilience, risk-taking behavior and personal characteristics of Thai adolescents living in Bangkok and to examine the differences in risk-taking behavior by school grades or gender. To accomplish these, a cross-sectional correlational research design was conducted. Resilience was measured by using the State-Trait Resilience Inventory developed by Hiew, Mori, Shirnizu and Torninaga.Risk-taking behavior was measured by the Risk-taking Behavior Questionnaire for Thai Adolescents which is a modified version of the 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) originally developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In order to make it more applicable to the Thai setting, the author modified the 2003 YRBS. The modified instrument was then translated and back translated; equivalence testing was performed; a pilot study was conducted; and test-retest reliability was measured. Overall, these procedures indicated that the modified version of YRBS had evidence of equivalence (semantic, content, and conceptual), feasibility and acceptability as well as good reliability for use among Thai adolescents to measure risk behavior. Risk-taking behavior in this study includes six categories of behavior: (1) behavior that contributes to unintentional injuries and violence; (2) tobacco use; (3) alcohol and other drug use; (4) sexual behavior contributing to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection; (5) unhealthy dietary behavior; and (6) inadequate physical activity.In all, 1409 students, grades 7 to 12 from six secondary schools in Bangkok, Thailand, participated in the study. Their mean age was 14.9 ± 1.8 years, and 54% were female. Data sets were analyzed using the SPSS for Windows, version 14.0 statistical software program. Resilience scores ranged from 72 to 161 with a mean of 125.55 and standard deviation of 11.44. There were significant positive and negative relationships between resilience and various risk-taking behavior (p Overall findings from this study provided more understanding of risk-taking behavior and its relationship with resilience among Thai adolescents. The recommendations for implementation and further studies were discussed.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether distinct patterns of adolescent adjustment existed when four domains of functioning were considered. The study included a sample of 299 high-risk urban adolescents, predominantly African American, ages 9-16 and their maternal caregivers. Cluster analysis was used to identify patterns of adjustment. Logistic regression analyses were used to explore whether variations in levels of five theoretically and empirically supported protective factors predicted cluster membership. A four-cluster model was determined to best fit the data. Higher rates of goal directedness and anger regulation coping predicted membership within the highest functioning cluster over a cluster demonstrating high externalizing problem behaviors, and neighborhood cohesion predicted highest functioning cluster membership over a cluster demonstrating high internalizing symptoms. Findings suggest that within a high-risk population of adolescents, significant variability in functioning will exist. The presence or absence of specific protective factors predicts developmental outcomes.

Purpose: Since September 11, 2001 military personnel have experienced a pattern of frequent deployment and reintegration, known as the deployment cycle. Deployments present unique challenges and opportunities to military personnel with lasting effects. This study examines group differences based on risk and protective factors, which were grouped into four domains (physical, mental, social, and spiritual) according to the Comprehensive Airman Fitness model in use by the U.S. Air Force to teach and increase resilience. The groups represent various levels of exposure to deployment dangers, up to and including combat, and time, recent deployment within two years and past deployment more than two years ago. Method: Secondary analysis was conducted with the 2013 Air Force Community Assessment Survey, a large, anonymous survey collected among U.S. Airmen. Discriminant analysis was utilized to determine and describe group differences. Results: The null hypothesis of no difference between group centroids was rejected. The primary group difference existed between Airmen who experienced combat and all other Airmen. The result of the discriminant analysis demonstrates at least two, possibly three, distinct groups exist among Airmen related to deployment experiences. The discriminant analysis generated six functions. Health and PTSD demonstrated the highest discriminant ability, although social support systems also played a significant role. Recent deployers reported higher levels of resilience and hardiness compared to past deployers regardless of exposure to deployment danger and combat. Meanwhile, past deployers reported higher levels of spirituality across all groups. Discussion: This study utilized aspects of resilience theory through the incorporation of time and a person-in-environment approach to the study of deployment and resilience. Implications related to social work practice include assessment of deployment frequency and the cumulative effects of deployment stressors. A specific policy recommendation is to ensure adequate leadership training in resilience promotion, as leadership represented an important component of resilience in this study. Finally, future research following this study could include qualitative analysis and studies utilizing more comprehensive scales among Airmen.