The brief resilience scale: assessing the ability to bounce back.
Bruce W Smith1, Jeanne Dalen, Kathryn Wiggins
1Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131-1161, USA. bwsmith@unm.edu
International Journal of Behavioral Medicine
|August 13, 2008
Summary
The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) reliably measures the ability to bounce back from stress. This new scale offers valuable insights into how individuals cope with health challenges.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Health Psychology
Background:
- Resilience is often defined broadly, but its core meaning relates to recovering from stress.
- Existing measures may assess resilience resources rather than the recovery process itself.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the psychometric properties of a new, brief resilience scale.
- To assess resilience as the capacity to bounce back or recover from adversity.
Main Methods:
- Developed the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) to measure stress recovery.
- Validated the BRS across four diverse samples, including students, cardiac patients, and chronic pain patients.
Main Results:
- The BRS demonstrated reliability and measured resilience as a single, unified concept.
- BRS scores correlated predictably with personal characteristics, social support, coping strategies, and health outcomes.
- The BRS showed significant negative associations with anxiety, depression, and negative affect, even when controlling for other resilience factors.
- Distinct differences in BRS scores were observed between patient groups, such as cardiac patients with and without Type D personality.
Conclusions:
- The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is a dependable tool for assessing resilience, specifically defined as the ability to recover from stress.
- The BRS provides unique and significant information for understanding individuals managing health-related stressors.
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