Face painting at a village fete, striking up a conversation with a group of buskers, driving around a housing estate in a police patrol car or sitting in the neighbourhood centre as volunteers recount local gossip are some of the ways researchers at the Young Foundation find out more about community wellbeing and resilience. The method is simple: to talk directly to people and ask them how they feel about their lives.

In this period of austerity, such questions may seem superfluous. Everyone is bound to be facing shocks and set backs at present. It is only natural that they experience these at some point in their lives. But what we believe makes the difference is how well communities can help individuals cope with these shocks and bounce back. Community resilience strengthens people's ability to withstand set backs, from the collapse of a major industry to natural disaster.

Our understanding of community resilience and why different groups in different areas are more resilient than others is still limited. Previous research has largely focused on what is lacking: jobs, health or safety. Our approach is to examine not just what is absent but also to uncover the often less visible (and therefore harder to measure) community assets that exist even within the poorest communities. The aim is to strike a finer balance between the deficit and the asset-based approach to understanding how communities function.

Our new Wellbeing and Resilience Measure (WARM) tool builds on this asset-based approach. WARM assesses current wellbeing and the balance of assets and vulnerabilities by way of looking at different data sources to draw conclusions on how resilient a community will be to shocks. Our statistical analysis of British Household Panel Survey, which feeds into WARM, identifies what aspects of our lives support wellbeing and resilience, for example frequency of talking to neighbours, confidence and feeling like you can overcome difficulties.

Our work in the Nechells and Shard End areas in Birmingham aims to uncover the role local organisations play by in encouraging resilience. We are investigating factors that affect a community's ability to tap into wider networks, allowing individuals to maximise their potential and help communities to be economically, socially and culturally vibrant.

Community resilience requires more than just resilient individuals. It also depends on the right kinds of social networks and structures. Our work will contribute to a growing body of evidence on what constitutes community resilience and build up a picture of how to better tackle a community's vulnerabilities and bring its assets to the fore.