Adolescents' Resilience: A Qualitative Study about Experiences of Bam Earthquake Survivors

Earthquake is the most catastrophic disaster that has harmful psychological, economic, social, political, and cultural effects on societies. Resilience or ability of a person for adapting to post-earthquake problems and crises is influenced by known and unknown factors. The present study aimed to explore experiences of Bam earthquake survivors about adolescents' resilience in that time. This is a qualitative study with a directed Content Analysis approach. The participants were a total of 34 individuals including; 10 teachers and 24 parents of the students who had earthquake experience in adolescent period. The subjects were selected based on a purposive method. The sampling was done until data saturation from the junior high schools in Bam city, Iran, in 2019. Data collected through in-depth and semi-structured interviews and analyzed by Granehim and Lundman method. Data analysis yielded 565 primary codes, 217 conceptual codes after integration, 25 subcategories, and 6 categories from the participants' experiences about their resilience against the disasters and earthquake. 6 categories include: disaster consequence, beliefs about resilience, beliefs about strengthening resilience, factors affecting resilience, consequences of facing disasters, the necessity of disaster preparedness. Participants stated different opinions and experiences about resilience and the factors that enhance or reduce it. They emphasized the necessity of preparedness and acquiring different skills for coping with disasters. Therefore, it is suggested that crisis management officials use these experiences to devise measures to prepare communities, before the occurrence of disasters, to support during and after disasters, to decrease the problems of future crises and to enhance resilience in communities, especially among adolescents as the next generation of society.