The Resilience Scale™
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The Resilience Scale User's Guide™ is essential if you want to get the most out of the Resilience Scale and the RS-14. More...
With
the purchase of a Resilience Scale User's Guide, you will receive FREE the
following 20-page Special Report (a US$10 value):
Click here to see the Table of Contents.
Click here to read the Abstract.
Click here to learn more about the Resilience Scale User's Guide™
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What age groups and ability levels is the Resilience Scale suitable for?
A. The RS has been used with age groups as young as early teens (13 and 14 years old) as well as the very old (greater than 100 years old). The Flesch Reading Ease is 65.3, which is easily understandable by most 13-year olds. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade level is 6.4, which corresponds with the grade level.
Q. Has the Resilience Scale been translated into other languages besides English?
A. Yes, the RS has been translated into at least 15 languages with several translations in process. Currently the RS is translated into Albanian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish, and Tamil.
Q. I am using the RS for my doctoral thesis and have a question about the 25-item scale. The one I am using has 26 items (last item is: ‘I am resilient’). All the literature I have found say it’s a 25-item scale so I’m a bit confused.
A. The RS is a 25-item instrument and the 26th item is optional. It is a concurrent validity question for you to correlate with the sum of the preceding 25 items.
Q. I have been unsuccessful at finding the early article on the psychometric properties of the RS in the Journal of Nursing Measurement (Wagnild, GM & Young, HM, 1993). Can you help me?
A. Please contact me personally at: gwagnild@resiliencescale.com and I will help you obtain this article.
Q. Can the RS be used as an assessment tool to determine motivation for self-management of chronic illness (e.g., heart disease, diabetes, hypertension)?
A. The RS has been associated with health promoting behaviors and self-management of illness in prior studies. More importantly, the RS measures the five core characteristics of resilience (meaningful life, perseverance, self reliance, equanimity, and existential aloneness). Individuals who have a reason to get up in the morning, believe they are capable, and have a drive to keep going, may be more likely to self-manage illness well. This means that a moderate to moderately high score using the RS may indicate better self-management potential.
Q. Is there a relationship between resilience and age?
A. Using the RS, the data from thousands of respondents strongly suggest that as one ages, scores on the RS increase. In a recent study of 1,061 individuals (see Special Report on this website), the average RS scores for those younger than 30 were about 133 and for those older than 60, the RS scores averaged 143. For each 10 year age group, the score increased by 2-3 points.
Q. Is resilience associated with depression?
A. The RS is consistently and significantly related to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and perceived stress. When the RS scores increase, symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress decrease.
Q. Am I allowed to change the RS?
A. The ‘Terms of Use’ state that if you choose to use the RS in your research or clinical practice, you are not allowed to change the wording, number of items, responses, and so forth of the RS. This is because the reliability and validity of the RS have been tested and reported in its current form and to change the scale may alter the validity and reliability of the RS.
Q. What scores are considered low or high on the RS?
A. A low score on the 25-item RS is 120 or lower and a high score on the RS is 160 or higher.
Q. I have read and agree to your ‘Terms of Use’ as outlined on www.resiliencescale.com. Do I need to do anything further to secure permission to use the RS?
A. By agreeing to the ‘Terms of Use’ on the website, you are given permission to use the RS. There is no charge for using the RS if you are not using it for financial gain.
Q. I am a doctoral candidate and as part of the IRB process, I must obtain permission to use the RS. Can you write a letter for me that will satisfy the IRB committee and my committee?
A. Yes I do this for students regularly. Please contact me at: gwagnild@resiliencescale.com and I will write a letter of permission for you.
Q. I am doing a study in which we are using several instruments. I don’t want to burden the subjects and wanted to ask if we should use the RS-14 rather than the RS.
A. The 25-item RS has been used for about 20 years with solid reliability and validity data. The RS-14 has been used for only about 1 year but also has very good psychometric properties. It is strongly correlated with the longer RS (r=.97) and the internal consistency reliability for the RS-14 is .93 (alpha coefficient). It takes about half the time to complete the RS-14.
Q. How long does it take to complete the RS?
A. Average response time is about 4-5 minutes and about half that for the RS-14.
Q. I would like to translate the RS into another language for my research. Is it okay to do this?
A. The first thing you need to do is check with me to see if it has already been translated or is in the process of being translated. Then, once you have translated the RS, retaining the response categories and number of items, it needs to be back-translated to English by someone blind to the original English RS. The back-translated instrument needs to then be compared to the original RS. I am happy to read back-translated versions for accuracy in meaning also.