Brief Resilience Scale [BRS-6]

Description

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS-6) was developed by Smith et al. (2008) to assess an individual’s ability to recover from stressful or difficult experiences. Unlike many resilience measures, it focuses directly on the ability to “bounce back” rather than on the factors that promote resilience.

Structure and Scoring

The scale consists of 6 items, rated on a five-point Likert scale from 1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree.

Items 2, 4, and 6 are reverse-scored. The final score is usually calculated as the mean of all six items. Higher scores indicate greater psychological resilience.

Applications

The BRS-6 is widely used in psychology, healthcare, education, and organizational research to examine resilience in relation to stress, depression, burnout, quality of life, and adjustment to challenging circumstances.

Psychometric Properties

The BRS-6 has demonstrated good reliability and validity and has been translated and applied across different populations and cultural settings.

References

Smith, B. W., Dalen, J., Wiggins, K., Tooley, E., Christopher, P., & Bernard, J. (2008). The Brief Resilience Scale: Assessing the ability to bounce back. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 15(3), 194–200.

Windle, G., Bennett, K. M., & Noyes, J. (2011). A methodological review of resilience measurement scales. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 9, 8.