Project Summary
The project team seeks to address colonial trauma and facilitate healing by developing and validating a culturally appropriate historical trauma and resilience (HTR) instrument, to improve holistic wellbeing for Native Hawaiians.Research Questions/Aims
- Develop a culturally appropriate instrument to measure Native Hawaiian historical trauma, along with the resources that protect and promote Native Hawaiian well-being.
Actionability
- Provide Native Hawaiian communities and those that support them with tools to measure the colonial traumatization of Native Hawaiians and the availability of culturally appropriate resources necessary to mitigate their trauma;
- Provide guidelines for mitigating colonial trauma and enhancing health.
Outcomes
Primary outcomes: Psychological dimensions of Native Hawaiian wellbeing, both direct consequences of historical trauma and the presence or absence of resilience resources.
Secondary outcomes: Physical health (obesity and chronic illnesses), academic achievement, employment, justice involvement, financial security, social cohesion in the community resulting from fragmentation due to colonization, acculturation through the General Ethnicity Questionnaire, and connectedness.
Methodology
The instrument creation will be carried out through three phases: 1) item development, 2) instrument development, and 3) instrument evaluation. These phases will include deductive and inductive methods as well as multiple rounds of collections of empirical data from Native Hawaiians across the Hawaiian islands to explore the psychometric characteristics of the HTR scale and how it relates to Native Hawaiian wellbeing. Sparked from the physical and psychological trauma left from the US and European colonization, the proposed instrument will capture the unique historical and cultural experiences that influence Native Hawaiian health, which can be used to develop targeted interventions, support culturally responsive evaluation, and advocate for policies that promote healing, resilience, and Indigenous equity.
