Term reference

Dissertation glossary

Key concepts of the volunteer resilience study — psychological constructs, methods and related terms.

Adaptation: The process of psychological adjustment to environmental demands. In this research, an adaptive function of volunteer activity that reduces helplessness and supports integration of traumatic experience.
Altruistic orientation: The personality's drive toward prosocial behaviour through volunteering with the aim of providing selfless social help. The author-developed methodology (Barinov & Shandruk, 2025) is a 23-item validated instrument with test–retest reliability r=0.78.
Anxiety: All resilience indicators in volunteers correlate negatively with reactive and situational anxiety. High anxiety combined with low personal maturity acts as a risk factor for resilience reduction.
Burnout: State of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion stemming from prolonged professional or volunteering stress. A central risk in war-time volunteering.
Coping strategies: Cognitive and behavioural efforts to regulate stress. The study identifies four coping profiles in volunteers: dominance of avoidance coping, dominance of confrontational coping, denial of responsibility, and dominance of constructive coping. The latter two are linked with higher resilience.
Emotional stability: Integral personality trait, opposite to neuroticism in the Big Five. Found to be one of the key factors of resilience — positively correlated with all resilience indicators in volunteers.
Existentiality: Capacity for openness, decisiveness and authentic engagement with the world (Längle). Composed of self-distancing, self-transcendence, existential freedom and responsibility. Identified as a powerful predictor of volunteers' resilience.
Fundamental existential motivations: Four basic dimensions of existence per Längle: support (to be), value (to love), authenticity (to be oneself), and meaning (to act). All four positively correlate with volunteer resilience.
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs): People forced to leave their permanent residence due to armed conflict but remaining within their country. Subject of the author's separate study on the emotional sphere of first- and second-wave IDPs (Barinov & Lisenaya, 2024).
Maladaptation: Disruption of adjustment to environment, accompanied by deteriorating psychological functioning. Risk factors include low resilience, high anxiety and predominance of avoidant coping.
Neuroticism: Big Five factor reflecting tendency toward negative emotions, anxiety and mood instability. One of the strongest negative predictors of resilience per regression analysis.
Personal maturity: Integral characteristic comprising responsibility, decentration, depth of experiences, life philosophy, tolerance, autonomy, contact, self-acceptance, creativity and synergy. Critically low personal maturity is a determinant of reduced resilience.
Post-traumatic growth (PTG): Positive psychological changes that develop following exposure to extreme stress or trauma. Considered a potential outcome of volunteer activity given sufficient resilience.
PTSD: Post-traumatic stress disorder. A core risk in war-time volunteering, particularly without adequate preparation and support systems.
Resilience: Dynamic mechanism for maintaining adaptive functioning under stress. Integral capacity to preserve effective functioning, emotional balance and meaning-making stability under prolonged volunteer activity in crisis and traumatic conditions. Develops through interaction of individual, social and contextual factors and can be cultivated via psychological preparation, self-regulation training and social support.
Self-determination: Ability to act in line with one's own values and beliefs independent of external pressure. Correlates with meaningfulness of life and all indicators of personal maturity.
Self-transcendence: Capacity to move beyond personal interests for values, others or higher purpose. Per regression analysis, positively defines most parameters of volunteer resilience.
Social support seeking coping: One of the central coping strategies. The study empirically demonstrates the leading role of social support seeking among the psychological predictors of volunteer resilience.
Stress resistance: Ability to maintain performance and psychological balance under stressors. Strongly related to self-acceptance (personal maturity) and existential freedom.
Volunteering: Multi-level interaction of personal and social factors that simultaneously shapes self-development, prosocial identity and collective community resilience. Under war conditions it requires high resilience as a basic resource for stress mastery.