Marginalized people are typically placed at risk for undesirable outcomes or experience significant adversity throughout their lives. Youth, particularly youth from marginalized communities, such as deaf people, are faced with significant challenges as they transition into adulthood. Despite difficult circumstances, some people are not just able to bounce back from these setbacks but also manage to thrive. The ability to bounce back, thwart challenges, and even thrive in the face of environmental adversity is defined as resilience by some scholars. Little is known about how deaf youth, particularly deaf youth across cultures are resilient. The transformative mixed methods dissertation aims to investigate the unique and common ways in which deaf people from different cultures are resilient. A mixed methods approach helped capture the breadth and depth of the studied phenomenon-resilience. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (for the quantitative data) and grounded theory analysis (for the qualitative data). Initial findings were shared with participants and stakeholders for further analysis to maximize the transformative potential of the findings. Results of this research depicted unique and similar ways deaf youth were resilient across Western (local) and non-Western cultures (global) and helped broaden our universal understanding of resilience. Findings will be used as a platform for future research; and, may be utilized to help inform policy and programs to support the potential of individual maximization.

Keywords: resilience, cross-cultural, deaf, youth, transformative, mixed methods 111