The Area of Resilience to Stress Event ({ARSE}): A New Method for Quantifying the Process of Resilience

Abstract

Research on resilience has been wide-ranging in terms of academic disciplines, outcomes of interest, and levels of analysis. However, given the broad nature of the resilience literature, resilience has been a difficult construct to assess and measure. In the current article, a new method for directly quantifying the resilience process across time is presented based on a foundational conceptual definition derived from the existing resilience literature. The Area of Resilience to Stress Event (ARSE) method utilizes the area created, across time, from deviations of a given baseline following a stress event (i.e., area under the curve). Using an accompanying R package (’arse’) to calculate ARSE, this approach allows researchers a new method of examining resilience for any number of variables of interest. A step-by-step tutorial for this new method is also described in an appendix.