The Russian version of the Brief Resilience Scale: The psychometric analysis on the example of samples of students, parents with many children and parents of disabled children

Abstract

Background. B. Smith’s Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is one of the most psychometrically sound instruments for assessing resilience worldwide (Windle et al., 2011). Objective. The aim of this study was to adapt the Russian version of the BRS. Design. Psychometric properties of the Russian BRS were analyzed on the materials of a series of studies involving 696 respondents, including parents of disabled children, parents with many children, and students of higher and secondary specialized educational institutions. Findings. The internal reliability of the Russian BRS was examined using the α-Cronbach coefficients, the values of which exceeded 0.8 in all study samples. The adapted scale demonstrated compliance with the original BRS factor structure containing direct and inverted test items, which provided the factor validity. Correlations between resilience and phenomenologically similar phenomena (hardiness, dispositional optimism, self-esteem, general self-efficacy, subjective vitality, life satisfaction, etc.) confirmed the convergent validity of the Russian BRS. In addition, parents of children with disabilities reported lower resilience than parents having many children, although statistically the results were not different from similar scores for students of higher and secondary specialized institutions. Conclusion. Russian version of BRS is reliable, valid and can be recommended for use for the assessment of resilience in Russian-speaking respondents.