Measures
BLIND
The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) was employed to estimate resilience among the study participants. Several evaluation studies on various populations with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds demonstrated excellent psychometric properties for CD-RISC-10 as an efficient measurement of resilience [Perspective taking was assessed using one subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). IRI measures affective components (i.e. empathic concern and personal distress) and cognitive (i.e. fantasy and perspective taking) components of empathy, and demonstrated good validity and reliability across studies [The reported Cronbach’s Alphas for both questionnaires were independent of the language version of the instruments used (Persian, Arabic, French, German, and English).Sociodemographic data including age, gender, marital status, nationality, language, religion, residence status in Germany, the length of time spent in Germany, type of accommodation, educational level, job situation, the number of family members in Germany, and the financial situation were collected at the end of the first interview session. The VBC counselors who collected the data in the form of structural interviews had been trained for the purpose in a three-day full-time workshop. For interviews to be blind, different counselors were assigned to the pre-test and the follow-up assessments of individual clients.