Psychometric evaluation of the Brief Resilience Scale among emerging adults of color.

Resilience, or “the ability to bounce back or recover from stress” (Smith et al., 2008, p. 194), is relevant to emerging adults, given the tasks and challenges they face during this developmental period. Studies of resilience have used predominantly White samples and focused on individualistic and privileged notions of resilience. Thus, existing definitions and measures of resilience may not adequately assess resilience among emerging adults of color (EOC). We evaluated the psychometric properties of the six-item Brief Resilience Scale (BRS; Smith et al., 2008) among an EOC sample during a pivotal adjustment period. Participants were 125 incoming college students (M_age = 17.59; 60% female, 66% Black, 40% Latiné) attending a month-long university summer orientation program. Resilience and related constructs (e.g., hope, self-compassion, depression, and stress) were measured at the beginning and end of the program. One item was dropped because of poor performance, and the confirmatory factor analysis of the resulting BRS-5 exhibited acceptable fit to the data. The BRS-5 exhibited good internal consistency, test–retest reliably, and convergent validity. A path analysis supported the criterion validity of the BRS-5, with resilience negatively predicting depression and stress 1 month later. However, lack of expected associations with anxiety, higher than expected correlations with self-esteem, and dropping of one item point to methodological concerns with using the BRS-5 in EOC. The results emphasize the importance of attending to cultural context when assessing resilience in marginalized populations. Translational implications for clinicians, researchers, program evaluators, and policy makers are discussed. This study examines the Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008) among emerging adults of color transitioning to college. The scale appeared to measure the construct of resilience in emerging adults of color but did not perform as expected. Cultural context should be taken into account when measuring resilience, doing so may guide the development of tailored interventions to improve the mental health of emerging adults of color entering higher education.