Personality, resilience, and educational recovery after disaster: A 12-month longitudinal analysis of mediation and cross-lagged associations

Individual differences in personality may shape educational adaptation following natural disasters. This 12-month longitudinal study examined Big Five personality traits, academic resilience, and four adaptation outcomes among 884 Turkish university students following the February 2023 earthquake. Latent growth curve models indicated that conscientiousness (β = 0.34) and emotional stability (β = 0.28) showed the strongest associations with adaptation trajectories. Academic resilience accounted for approximately 32–38% of these associations, although concurrent T1 assessment of personality and resilience precludes causal interpretation of the indirect effects. Confirmatory factor analyses and the Fornell–Larcker criterion supported the empirical distinctiveness of personality and academic resilience. Cross-lagged analyses showed prospective associations between resilience and subsequent adaptation across academic performance, online learning adaptation, psychological well-being, and life satisfaction, with resilience-to-adaptation paths generally stronger and more consistent than reverse paths. These associations should be interpreted cautiously because traditional CLPMs do not separate within- and between-person variance. A robustness analysis using verified pre-earthquake GPA records ( n = 648) indicated that the principal personality associations with academic recovery persisted when performance was modeled relative to pre-earthquake achievement. Person-centered analyses supported three prototypical trajectories: Resilient Adapters (63.7%), Gradual Improvers (26.7%), and Struggling Students (9.6%). The findings are organized using the Dynamic Personality–Resilience–Adaptation framework as a heuristic, educationally specific extension of existing personality-adaptation accounts rather than as an independently validated theory.