[Psychological resilience features of urban migrant children and rural left-behind children in Sichuan province of China].

OBJECTIVE

To explore the characteristics of resilience of urban migrant children and rural left-behind children of Chinese farmer workers and to figure out the discrepancy between them.

METHODS

The samples consisted of 1 391 primary students and middle school students from Chengdu, Guangyuan, Yibin, and Mianyang in Sichuan Province. The revised version of the Healthy Kids Resilience Assessment was used for the measurement of resilience. And ANOVA was performed for data analysis.

RESULTS

The results of the present study indicated that among all the junior high students, urban migrant children got a significantly lower score of resilience (128.11±21.70) than rural left-behind children (135.61±22.77) and the control group (132.87±23.22), F(0.05 (2, 884))=8.076, P<0.001. And migrant children got lower scores on three external protective factors of resilience-family, school, community as well as on resilience traits than left-behind children and the control group (Family: F(0.05(2, 884))=7.820, P<0.001; School: F(0.05(2, 884))=5.041, P=0.007; Community: F(0.05(2, 884))=9.261, P<0.001; Resilience traits: F(0.05(2, 884))=3.510, P=0.030). No significant difference was noted between left-behind children and control group. Gender difference and grade difference were noted for each group.

CONCLUSION

The resilience of migrant children was not so good as non-migrant children. Migrant children were enjoying less intimate interpersonal relationship in their schools, their families as well as their community, and they could get less psychological support from the external environment, so that migrant children could not develop some resilience traits to promote the sound development of themselves. Suggestions for intervention were also discussed.