Predictors of Resourcefulness in Preadolescent Children

Resourcefulness is a set of cognitive-behavioral self-control skills for coping with stress to maintain quality of life. However, research examining precursors in the development of resourcefulness in preadolescents is scant. A cross-sectional approach was used to investigate hypothesized predicting effects of intrinsic contextual factors (children's age, gender, and school performance), extrinsic contextual factors (parents' age, gender, education, income, and resourcefulness), and process regulators (academic stress and dispositional optimism) in a convenience sample of 361 preadolescent-parent dyads. Results show that preadolescents' process regulators, academic stress, and dispositional optimism were significant predictors of resourcefulness. The findings suggest that preadolescents' resourcefulness was greatly influenced by process regulators, which are cognitive perceptions intervening the use of resourcefulness. Further research with various study designs is needed to examine additional factors that may influence resourcefulness in large and more diverse child-parent samples.