Article Critique

Article Critique

Article Critique

In this article there has been considerable confusion over the difference between risk factors and protective factors. Conceptually, shielding components could be glimpsed as easily the opposite of risk factors. For demonstration, dysfunctional family environments increase the risk of children evolving diverse troubles while healthy family environments decline the risk of young kids evolving problems. Thus, some have contended that for the study of resiliency to provide insight over and above that profited by the study of risk, we have to look for interactions between risk and shielding factors.

While the absence of an interaction should not inevitably detract from the importance of isolating a component that appears to facilitate the wholesome development of young kids, we gain new insight into how young kids in high risk situations contend when we can isolate a factor that seems to decline the level of disturbance in high risk young kids, but has little or no effect on smaller risk children. From a policy viewpoint, the distinction between “main consequences” and “interactions” in comprehending the development of difficulty behaviours such as youthful offending is important. Findings that might be distinuished as “main consequences” suggest that interventions on the part of society should be over the board: alterations would help every person - those at risk and those not at risk. On the other hand, interaction effects in the form of “protective factors” are, as we have suggested, likely being important only for those “at risk.” To the extent that resources are scarce, and protective factors can be provided or encouraged by state agencies, these resources should only be targeted to that part of the population that is genuinely at risk. Criminologists have only somewhat recently taken up a resiliency form in alignment to realise the development of offending ...