The social ecology of displacement: a mixed-method analysis of stressors, trauma and coping in Northern Sri Lanka
Bibliographic record
Abstract
War survivors encounter chronic stressors, which can negatively impact mental health above and beyond direct exposure to war-related trauma. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship of coping with chronic stressors and war exposure in post-conflict Northern Sri Lanka. Using a two study, mixed-method sequential exploratory design, the aim of study 1 (qualitative) was to explore how stressors are conceptualized and the impact of stressors on coping through interviews with adult war survivors (N=53). Using a phenomenological lens for analysis and grounded in the daily stressors framework and families of coping theory, a social ecological model of stressors and coping is proposed. Participants shared that chronic and systemic stressors permeate daily life and impact on psychological wellbeing. Common coping strategies included support-seeking, problem-solving, helplessness, and escape. The goal of study 2 (quantitative) was to refine the social ecological model of stressors and coping with a sample of 1015 adult participants who were part of a larger epidemiological study. Secondary data analysis was conducted using data from a demographic and displacement history questionnaire, the Stressful Life Events Checklist, and the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to understand the relationship between stressors, trauma symptom severity (TSS), and the role of social support as a coping mechanism. The social ecological model of stressors and coping identified in study 1 was refined through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in study 2, resulting in four stressor constructs: 1) Personal Safety Concerns; 2) War Exposure Losses; 3) Financial Loss and Hardship, and 4) Personal Hardships. SEM results indicated that War Exposure Losses and Financial Loss and Hardship stressors were positively related to TSS whereas Personal Hardship was negatively related to TSS, suggesting resilience in situations of chronic adversity. Findings from this study further highlighted that available social support may be less effective for individuals who have experienced particular stressors such as Financial Loss and Hardship. Findings from this study can inform a framework of traumatic stress that transcend the traditional emphasis on direct exposure to war-related violence to also consider chronic stressors and coping mechanisms in post-conflict settings. Keywords: chronic stressors, posttraumatic stress disorder, Sri Lanka, post-conflict, mixed-method research. Keywords: chronic stressors, posttraumatic stress disorder, Sri Lanka, post-conflict, mixed-method research.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".