Social change and birth cohorts decreased resilience among college students in China: A cross-temporal meta-analysis, 2007-2020

Resilience is an important psychological resource that helps individuals successfully adapt to trauma, adversity, and stress. Rapid economic growth and increasing social problems constitute the basic features of social change in China. Considering that resilience is a psychological resource in dynamic adaptation, it may be affected by social change. College life is a major period of transition from school academic to social life. College students face more potential challenges from physical and psychological changes and need more resilience resources. The dynamic trends of college students' resilience with social changes and its relationship with macroenvironmental factors are worth exploring. Therefore, cross-temporal meta-analysis was employed to investigate resilience changes from 2007 to 2020. One hundred forty-four studies (N = 87,017) that used the Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC) were analysed. Additionally, direct and lag correlation analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between resilience and the macrosocial environment. Over the past 13 years, research has found that resilience has decreased by 12.7 points (d = -0.97). Macrosocial indicators, such as economic conditions, social connectedness, and overall threat, are important predictors of declining resilience.