GROW Zambia: A pilot cluster-randomized trial of a spiritually-based character strengths training curriculum to enhance resilience among Zambian youth

Figures & data

Figure 1. Study flow diagram.

Table 1. GROW curriculum components, with rankings of importance by students and GROW leaders.

GROW Program Component	Student rank order (# votes)	Leader rank order (# votes)
(1) Music and dancing: Starting the group with happy music and dance/movement	12 (8)	2 (10)
(2) Personal and spiritual affirmation: Reciting together ‘God loves me and He has created me for his high purposes. He will use my story to bring goodness, honor and hope.’	2 (11)	1 (16)
(3) Build others up: Sharing something good that came from last week’s homework goal. Others celebrate and applaud
(4) Learning definitions of the 24 character strengths/virtues and writing down the character strength, definition, Bible verse, principle	12 (8)	2 (10)
(5) Hearing the Bible stories that teach about the character strengths and drumming with their fingers when they heard the character strength being used in the Bible story	2 (11)	7 (8)
(6) Acting out the Bible stories or watching others act them out	1 (12)	2 (10)
(7) Story weaving: telling/hearing stories about how they or others have demonstrated the character strengths		9 (7)
(8) Group problem solving: brainstorming a solution on how they and others can grow stronger in relation to the character strength being taught – games, role playing, activities		2 (10)
(9) Measure your strength
(10) Homework drawing: Drawing a picture of their personal character goal for the week	6 (9)
(11) Goal setting with a partner: setting a goal in pairs each week for how to grow stronger in that week’s character strength (Coaching a Partner)	12 (8)
(12) Marching and memorizing the definition, Bible verse, and principle
(13a) Meditating in silence for one minute to listen to their hearts and breaths	6 (9)	9 (7)
(13b) Practicing forgiveness: meditating on what they need to ask forgiveness for, who they need to forgive, and what they need to forgive and accept about themselves	6 (9)	2 (10)
(13 c) Gratitude reflection: meditating on something good that happened in the past week, something good about the present moment, and something they are looking forward to	6 (9)
(14) Community gratitude: thanking others in the class for something they did or said during the GROW session	2 (11)
(15a) Group gratitude prayer: thanking God as a group for giving them His Spirit, and all they need to grow strong in character and to become more than overcomers in every circumstance	5 (10)	7 (8)
(15b) Blessing: Receiving an individual benediction/hug from the leader		11 (6)
Getting to know my GROW leader and learning from them	6 (9)
Serving community by working with others on a monthly service project	6 (9)
Daily homework: meditating on story and memorizing character strength, verse, principle

Table 2. Sample sociodemographic characteristics across all data collection time points.

		Baseline (Time 1)						Post Phase 1^a (Time 2)						Post Phase 2^a (Time 3)
	Initial (n = 343)		Delayed (n = 200)	Test Statistic^b	p-value		Initial (n = 299)		Delayed (n = 312)	Test Statistic^b	p-value		Initial (n = 241)		Delayed (n = 277)	Test Statistic^b	p-value
Girls (%)	56.6		53.7	0.57	0.45		59.7		55.6	1.10	0.30		61.0		56.3	1.19	0.28
Age (M, SD years)	11.3 (0.9)		11.5 (1.0)	−1.92	0.06		12.0 (0.9)		12.0 (1.1)	−0.32	0.75		12.6 (0.9)		12.6 (1.1)	0.23	0.82
Grade in school (%)				2.14	0.34					19.41	<0.001					38.38	<0.001
4	7.3		5.3				2.0		3.8				1.2		1.4
5	47.5		52.3				15.4		23.0				8.3		27.4
6	45.2		42.3				56.4		58.1				46.1		38.6
7	0.0		0.0				26.2		15.0				44.4		32.5
Type of school attended (%)				0.10	0.75					0.43	0.51					1.25	0.26
Government school	14.0		14.7				13.1		15.0				11.4		14.4
Community school	86.0		85.3				86.9		85.0				88.4		85.6
Number of parents in home (%)				0.38	0.83					0.29	0.87					2.22	0.33
Two parents	67.1		69.0				63.0		64.7				66.4		60.3
One parent	20.1		18.2				21.2		20.8				19.1		23.5
Other	12.9		12.8				15.8		14.4				14.5		16.2
Home has ≤3 rooms (%)	36.7		40.7	1.08	0.30		35.9		39.9	1.09	0.30		39.2		36.6	0.37	0.55
Eats ≤2 meals per day (%)	9.6		15.7	5.45	0.02		15.1		20.4	3.58	0.06		13.3		28.4	20.47	<0.001
Religious affiliation^c (%)				1.00	0.32					0.46	0.50
Christian or Catholic	99.7		100.0				99.0		98.3				–		–
Other religion^c	0.3		0.0				1.0		1.7				–		–

^aTime 2 data collection occurred ~7 months post-baseline immediately after completion of initial-group GROW classes; Time 3 data collection occurred ~14 months post-baseline immediately after completion of delayed-group GROW classes.

^bTest statistic for comparison between groups is the Wald chi-square for all categorical variables, and the t-statistic for age, accounting for within-school cluster sampling.

^cReligious affiliation was not asked on the Time 3 survey. ‘Other religion’ includes Hinduism, Islam, and Other religion

Table 3. Psychological resilience measures: Results from mixed effects modelling comparing the initial start and delayed start groups across three time points.

	Initial start group		Delayed start group		Between-group differences
	Estimate	SE	Estimate	SE	|Estimate|	P
T1	29.24	0.62	30.86	0.65	1.62	0.04
T2	32.10	0.51	31.09	0.52	1.04	0.11
T3	32.05	0.64	31.35	0.53	0.709	0.29
Within-group changes	Pairwise Contrast Estimate	p	Pairwise Contrast Estimate	P
From T1 to T2	2.86	<.001	0.23	0.76
From T1 to T3	2.82	<.001	0.49	0.53
From T2 to T3	0.04	0.94	0.25	0.66

Between group differences refer to the difference in psychological resilience at that timepoint between the initial start and delayed start group. Within-group changes refer to the change in psychological resilience from one timepoint to the next in either the initial start or the delayed start group. Psychological resilience was measured using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 10.

Figure 2. Changes in psychological resilience.

Error bars represent ±1 standard error. Psychological resilience was measured using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. There was a significant difference between the initial and delayed start groups at T1 (p < 0.05). There was a significant change in psychological resilience for the initial start group from T1 to T2 and from T1 to T3 (p < 0.05), but no significant change from T2 to T3 (p > 0.05). There was no significant change in the delayed start group from T1 to either T1 to T2, T1 to T3, or T2 to T3 (p > 0.05).

Data availability statement

Study data available at https://osf.io/57ft2/ may be accessed by researchers in adolescent resilience, positive youth development, positive psychology, or religiousness/spirituality who work at an institution with a Federal Wide Assurance (U.S.) or equivalent accreditation, and who wish to conduct secondary analysis of the data. Investigators should send an inquiry describing their qualifications, research objectives, and planned analysis of the data to the corresponding author. Requests will be reviewed and approved by an independent third party.