Validation of the 10-item resilience scale with Mexican college students

Resilience is the ability to emerge strengthened in an adverse scenario. One population that suffer constant stress are doctors and medical students, which is why it is necessary to have validated instruments to assess resilience.

To evaluate the validity and reliability parameters of the 10-item resilience scale, Connor-Davidson (CD-RISC-10), in a Mexican university sample.

A sample of 1333 first-year medical students who agreed to participate in the study was evaluated; sample selection was for convenience, with an average age of 18 years (standard deviation: 1.4 years; 17-39 years). CD-RISC-10 scale was applied to the sample. In a sub-sample, Mexican resilience scale (RESI-M) was applied to assess convergent validity; the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory were used to divergent validity.

A factorial analysis was performed with a factor that explains 96.245 of the total variances. The internal consistency of the scale presented a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.935. The test-retest was r = 0.521, p = 0.01; the correlation with the RESI-M was moderate (r = 0.61, p = 0.0001). The correlation with the Beck Anxiety Inventory was r = −0.214 (p < 0.05) and with the Beck Depression Inventory, r = −199, p < 0.05).

The 10-item Spanish version of the Connor and Davidson CD-RISC had adequate psychometric properties to estimate resilience in medical university students.