Development and preliminary validation of the Psychological Resilience Scale

Psychological resilience can be defined as the ability to remain calm during crises/chaos and to return to pre-crisis status quickly. The aim of this study was to develop a short self-report measure of psychological resilience and to perform preliminary validation of it. Based on literature analysis and existing measures of such constructs as resilience and hardiness, a preliminary item pool of 25 items was created. It was supposed to use this scale as one of the measures in the large scale survey in the frame of the National Research programme (project Nr. VPP-COVID-2020/1-0011), so it was necessary to shorten the preliminary set of items as much as possible. Based on expert ratings 12 items were retained for further analysis. The psychometric analysis was performed based on a large test-development sample (N = 2608, aged from 18 – 74, 39.7% male; n = 835 filled the survey in Russian). For the analysis of convergent validity, four measures were used: Social Problem-Solving Inventory-Revised version (SPSI-R), Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ-27), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y1, and Centre for Epidemiological Studies – Depression Scale (CES-D). Based on the psychometric analysis the final version of the Psychological Resilience Scale (PRS) was developed. PRS consists of 7 items, which are evaluated on a five-point Likert scale ranging (from 0 = totally disagree to 4 = totally agree); it has a single-factor structure and shows good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .87). Significant positive correlations with Positive problem orientation (r = -.43) and Emotion regulation skills (r = .47), and significant negative correlations with Negative problem orientation (r = -.46), Anxiety (r = -.46) and Depression (r = -.49) suggests good convergent validity of the PRS. The Psychological Resilience scale is available in Latvian and Russian, is a reliable and valid screening measure of self-rated psychological resilience.