Incorporating hope and resilience into policy and program evaluation: Empirical evidence from Australia

: In discussions about the goals we should set for our policies and programs, there are some familiar
moral reasons to think that hope and resilience should often be included. In particular, hope and resilience are
both widely recognized as moral virtues, and they may be vital for social cohesion. To demonstrate the
feasibility of modelling and measuring the relevant variables and of putting them to use, we developed and
tested a number of hypotheses. Drawing upon survey data that we collected from 429 participants (211
Indigenous Australians and 218 non-Indigenous Australians), we found that favourable beliefs about the
quality of government support are positively associated with greater levels of hope and resilience. Hope and
resilience, in turn, are positively associated with greater satisfaction with life. But most interestingly, we found
a strong and widespread positive association between fully recognizing the legacy of historical injustices in
Australia and having hope.