Brief Resilience Scale (BRS)

Abstract

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is a standardized psychometric self-report instrument designed by Bruce W. Smith and colleagues (2008) to measure psychological resilience in its purest, most direct, and etymologically foundational sense: the capacity to bounce back, recover, or rebound from psychological stress, adversity, illness, and traumatic life disruptions. Whereas earlier and contemporary resilience instruments—such as the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) or the Wagnild and Young Resilience Scale (RS)—predominantly conceptualize resilience as an amalgamation of protective psychosocial resources (e.g., hardiness, optimism, self-efficacy, social support, and active coping strategies), the BRS specifically isolates the functional, dynamic outcome of returning to baseline homeostatic functioning following disruption. Comprising six items scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), the instrument utilizes an alternating valenced structure with three positively phrased items (Items 1, 3, and 5) and three negatively phrased, reverse-scored items (Items 2, 4, and 6) to control for acquiescence bias.

Psychometrically, the BRS demonstrates exceptional measurement properties across diverse clinical, non-clinical, and occupational populations. In initial validation investigations across four independent student and chronic illness cohorts (including cardiac rehabilitation patients and individuals diagnosed with fibromyalgia), the scale exhibited robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .80 to .91) and reliable test-retest stability (r = .69 over one month; intraclass correlation coefficients exceeding .75). Factor analytic inquiries consistently substantiate a strong unidimensional primary construct, though methodological artifacts frequently yield a secondary method factor attributable to item polarity. Construct validation establishes that the BRS uniquely predicts health outcomes—including reduced somatic symptoms, decreased physical pain, diminished negative affect, and mitigated physiological exhaustion—above and beyond personal resources and general coping styles. With its exceptional brevity, transparent scoring, and distinct theoretical focus, the BRS has become an internationally validated benchmark across health psychology, psychiatric epidemiology, behavioral medicine, and occupational health.

Keywords

Brief Resilience Scale, BRS, psychological resilience, bouncing back, stress recovery, psychometrics, health psychology, behavioral medicine, allostasis, homeostatic recovery, coping, somatic symptoms, factor analysis, test-retest reliability, construct validity

Authors

The Brief Resilience Scale was conceptualized, developed, and empirically validated by an interdisciplinary team of clinical, behavioral, and health psychology researchers led by Bruce W. Smith, Ph.D. The original research team and institutional affiliations at the time of development include:

• Bruce W. Smith, Ph.D. — Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. (Primary Contact / Lead Investigator: [email protected]).
• Jeanne Dalen, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, and Research Scientist, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States.
• Kathryn Wiggins, B.A. — Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States.
• Erin Tooley, M.S., Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico (subsequently Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island), United States.
• Paula Christopher, B.A. — Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States.
• Jennifer Bernard, B.A. — Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States.

Purpose

The primary clinical and empirical purpose of the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is to provide an efficient, psychometrically sound, and conceptually unconfounded measure of an individual’s ability to bounce back or recover from stressful events and adversity. In behavioral medicine and clinical psychology, assessing resilience is vital for identifying vulnerability to post-traumatic stress, affective disorders, burnout, and chronic disease exacerbation. However, before the publication of the BRS in 2008, the psychometric landscape of resilience was heavily saturated with instruments that measured resilience indirectly through personal assets, psychological traits, and behavioral coping repertoires. Scales such as the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC; Connor & Davidson, 2003) and the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA; Friborg et al., 2003) captured concepts such as self-efficacy, optimism, persistence, goal orientation, humor, social support, and personal competence under the umbrella of resilience.

While these psychological resources are indisputably correlated with positive adaptation, Smith and colleagues (2008) argued that defining resilience via its precursors or correlates creates significant theoretical and empirical circularity. When researchers attempt to investigate whether “resilience” buffers against depression or promotes physical recovery from medical interventions (e.g., cardiac catheterization or rehabilitation), utilizing a scale saturated with items assessing optimism, self-worth, or positive affect artificially inflates bivariate correlations due to shared construct variance. A patient who is naturally optimistic or possesses high social support will score exceptionally high on traditional resilience inventories, but this does not inherently prove that their biological, affective, or psychological systems recover quickly following severe acute or chronic stress.

The BRS was explicitly designed to resolve this conceptual conflation by serving three distinct clinical and research purposes:

• Isolation of the Pure Recovery Dimension: The scale isolates the precise operational definition of resilience rooted in physics and ecology: the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance, snap back, and return to an equilibrium or homeostatic baseline after perturbation.
• Differential Resource Evaluation: By separating recovery from protective resources, researchers can investigate which psychological assets (e.g., mindfulness, social networks, cognitive reappraisal) actively facilitate the speed and completeness of stress recovery, rather than presuming these resources are resilience itself.
• Brevity in High-Burden Settings: In large-scale epidemiological cohorts, clinical trials, emergency departments, inpatient medical wards, and intensive longitudinal monitoring designs (such as Ecological Momentary Assessment), lengthy 25- to 50-item inventories impose prohibitive cognitive and temporal burdens on participants. The 6-item BRS requires less than two minutes to complete while retaining exceptional psychometric fidelity.

Consequently, the BRS is broadly deployed across psychosomatic medicine, workplace well-being evaluations, oncology, rheumatology, military post-deployment screening, and university mental health monitoring.

Psychological Construct

The Brief Resilience Scale operationalizes resilience as a specific, functional capability: the ability to bounce back, recover, or regain original psychological equilibrium following adversity, acute crisis, illness, or prolonged stress. To understand the depth of this construct, it is essential to distinguish the BRS’s theoretical domain from adjacent but distinct trajectories of psychological adaptation, particularly resistance and thriving (or post-traumatic growth).

Resilience versus Resistance and Thriving

In developmental and behavioral sciences, responses to traumatic or stressful events follow distinct trajectories, as elucidated by Carver (1998) and Bonanno (2004):

• Resistance (Immunity / Invariance): The capacity to withstand stress without exhibiting any measurable decrement in functioning or mental health. An individual showing pure resistance does not experience a significant drop in baseline well-being when exposed to stressors; they remain unperturbed.
• Recovery / Resilience (Bouncing Back): The process wherein an individual experiences a transient disruption, decline, or temporary distress following a stressful event, but successfully returns to their prior level of functional equilibrium, health, and affective stability within a reasonable timeframe.
• Thriving (Post-Traumatic Growth): The phenomenon where an individual does not merely return to their pre-crisis baseline, but undergoes transformative psychological growth, arriving at a level of functioning, existential maturity, or psychological insight higher than that which existed prior to the adversity.

The BRS specifically captures the second trajectory: recovery. The construct presupposes that human beings inevitably experience distress, pain, grief, and physical or emotional depletion when confronted with severe stressors. Resilience, within the BRS paradigm, is not the stoic absence of pain or distress (which constitutes resistance), nor is it the grandiose narrative of becoming superhuman through trauma (which constitutes thriving). Rather, it is the homeostatic restoration of vitality, balance, and cognitive-affective functioning after the disruption has occurred.

The Dual-Polarity Operationalization

The construct measured by the BRS is inherently bidirectionally balanced across two operational poles:

• Direct Recovery Agility (Positive Dimension): Manifested in items reflecting rapid rebound, low expenditure of unproductive recovery time, and ease in navigating challenging circumstances (e.g., “I tend to bounce back quickly after hard times”; “It does not take me long to recover from a stressful event”; “I usually come through difficult times with little trouble”). Individuals scoring high on this dimension process stress efficiently, employ adaptive regulatory mechanisms swiftly, and terminate acute stress responses rapidly once the external threat recedes.
• Protracted Impairment / Vulnerability to Setbacks (Negative Reversed Dimension): Manifested in items reflecting lingering emotional disruption, prolonged recovery latency, and significant friction or immobility when encountering adversity (e.g., “I have a hard time making through stressful events”; “It is hard for me to snap back when something bad happens”; “I tend to take a long time to get over set-backs in my life”). High scores on these reverse items indicate an inability to terminate neuroendocrine and affective arousal, perseverative rumination, and long-lasting functional impairment following stressors.

By contrasting recovery speed against protracted latency across symmetric item pairs, the BRS measures resilience along a continuous dimensional spectrum, spanning from extreme recovery vulnerability (inability to rebound) to high recovery agility (rapid, efficient restoration of functional equilibrium).

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual scaffolding of the Brief Resilience Scale integrates foundational theories from biological stress physiology, mechanical physics, cognitive appraisal theory, and psychobiological homeostasis.

1. Etymological and Physical Foundation: The Concept of Resilire

The term resilience originates from the Latin verb resilire, meaning “to leap back” or “to rebound.” In physical sciences and materials engineering, resilience represents the physical property of a material (such as steel or vulcanized rubber) that enables it to absorb energy when deformed elastically under stress and release that energy upon unloading, returning to its original configuration without undergoing permanent plastic deformation or fracturing. Smith et al. (2008) translated this mechanical formulation directly into human psychology: life stressors exert compressive or tensile strain upon the human organism. A resilient human system undergoes elastic deformation (manifested as transient acute stress, sadness, anxiety, or autonomic activation) but retains the systemic integrity necessary to snap back to baseline once the load is removed or processed.

2. Homeostatic and Allostatic Theory

The theoretical framework of the BRS is intimately linked to the neurobiological models of homeostasis (Cannon, 1932) and allostasis and allostatic load formulated by Bruce McEwen (1998). Homeostasis refers to the maintenance of physiological parameters (e.g., core temperature, blood pH, glucose levels) within narrow limits vital for survival. McEwen extended this concept via allostasis: achieving biological and psychological stability through dynamic change. When confronted with acute environmental threats, the brain orchestrates physiological changes via the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) axis, elevating catecholamines and cortisol.

Allostatic load represents the cumulative physiological wear and tear on tissues and cardiovascular pathways resulting from chronic, unmitigated stress responses or, crucially, delayed recovery following stress termination. McEwen identified four distinct profiles of allostatic load, one of which is precisely the failure to shut down allostatic responses after stress has ended. This failure leads to chronic sustained hypertension, hypercortisolemia, systemic inflammation, and metabolic dysregulation. The BRS theoretically captures the psychological and behavioral manifestation of efficient allostatic termination: the swift down-regulation of hyperarousal and affective distress, enabling the organism to curtail allostatic wear and re-establish resting homeostatic equilibrium.

3. Lazarus and Folkman’s Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

Under the transactional model formulated by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984), stress is not merely an external stimulus nor an internal physiological reaction, but an ongoing transaction between the person and their environment. Stress arises when an individual appraises environmental demands as taxing or exceeding their available personal resources (primary and secondary appraisals). Resilient individuals on the BRS utilize cognitive appraisals characterized by perceived controllability, threat containment, and dynamic coping flexibility. Rather than viewing setbacks as permanent personal indictments, they engage in active cognitive restructuring and behavioral problem-solving, which shortens the recovery phase and prevents transient negative encounters from escalating into chronic demoralization.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Brief Resilience Scale has been rigorously evaluated across multiple cultures, clinical populations, and experimental paradigms, consistently demonstrating outstanding construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Construct and Convergent Validity

During the initial validation series by Smith et al. (2008), the BRS was administered across four disparate demographic samples:

• Sample 1: 128 undergraduate university students.
• Sample 2: 64 undergraduate students evaluated in a two-wave longitudinal design.
• Sample 3: 112 outpatients diagnosed with cardiovascular disease enrolled in a formalized cardiac rehabilitation program.
• Sample 4: 205 adult patients diagnosed with chronic fibromyalgia participating in an intervention trial.

In all four cohorts, the BRS demonstrated statistically significant, theory-consistent convergent correlations with a broad spectrum of psychosocial resources, affective dimensions, and health-related behaviors:

• Personal Coping Resources: The BRS correlated positively and strongly with optimism (Life Orientation Test-Revised; r = .40 to .69, p < .001), generalized self-efficacy (General Self-Efficacy Scale; r = .38 to .59, p < .001), and the protective traits measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC; r = .59, p < .001).
• Affective Functioning: Higher resilience was strongly inversely correlated with depression measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; r = -.50 to -.63, p < .001), state-trait anxiety (STAI; r = -.47 to -.56, p < .001), and perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale; r = -.54 to -.67, p < .001).
• Coping Repertoires: As measured by the Brief COPE, resilient individuals scored significantly higher on active, problem-focused coping (r = .24 to .38) and positive reframing (r = .28 to .42), while showing robust negative associations with behavioral disengagement (r = -.35 to -.48), denial (r = -.25 to -.37), and self-blame (r = -.32 to -.45).

Discriminant Validity

A crucial empirical justification for the BRS is its discriminant validity from other resilience and personal resource scales. Smith et al. (2008) conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses to examine whether the BRS measured something distinct from the CD-RISC and the Resilience Scale (RS). The findings revealed that while scales like the CD-RISC and RS overlap heavily with the personality traits of optimism, self-efficacy, and neuroticism, the BRS accounted for unique variance in psychological recovery. When controlling for the Big Five personality factors, the BRS remained a significant independent predictor of life satisfaction, somatic health symptoms, and perceived stress, demonstrating that “bouncing back” is not merely a linguistic surrogate for low neuroticism or high extraversion.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

The clinical utility of the BRS is highlighted by its predictive power in medical and psychiatric populations:

• Cardiac Rehabilitation: In the cardiac outpatient sample (Sample 3), higher BRS scores uniquely predicted lower somatic symptoms, diminished exercise fatigue, and lower perceived physical limitations, even after statistically controlling for age, cardiac event severity, and baseline depression.
• Fibromyalgia Patients: In Sample 4, fibromyalgia patients with elevated BRS scores exhibited significantly less pain catastrophizing, lower systemic pain severity, reduced physical fatigue, and lower rates of medical absenteeism. Resilient patients returned to physical functioning substantially faster after acute pain flare-ups compared to their low-resilience counterparts.
• Biological Markers: Subsequent psychoneuroimmunological studies have linked higher BRS scores to lower circulating levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (such as interleukin-6 [IL-6] and C-reactive protein [CRP]) and more rapid autonomic recovery (measured via heart rate variability [HRV] vagal rebound) following laboratory-induced mental stress challenges (e.g., the Trier Social Stress Test).

Reliability

The Brief Resilience Scale demonstrates robust reliability across diverse demographic strata, cultural contexts, and clinical subgroups. The psychometric evaluation of reliability encompasses internal consistency, test-retest temporal stability, and measurement precision.

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency estimates using Cronbach’s alpha (α) and McDonald’s omega (ω) consistently exceed the conventional threshold of .70 for research instruments, frequently matching or exceeding .80 across independent validation trials:

• Original Validation Study (Smith et al., 2008):
  • Undergraduate Sample 1 (N = 128): α = .84
  • Undergraduate Sample 2 (N = 64): α = .80 (Time 1) and α = .91 (Time 2)
  • Cardiac Rehabilitation Sample (N = 112): α = .86
  • Fibromyalgia Patient Sample (N = 205): α = .80
• International Cross-Cultural Replications:
  • German Adaptation (Chmitorz et al., 2018; N = 1,481 general population): α = .85; McDonald’s ω = .85.
  • Spanish Validation (Rodríguez-Rey et al., 2016; N = 620 parents of pediatric intensive care patients): α = .83.
  • Dutch Version (Soer et al., 2019; N = 1,227 workers with chronic musculoskeletal pain): α = .83; intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = .78.
  • Chinese Translation (Fung, 2020; N = 450 university students and healthcare workers): α = .85.

Corrected item-total correlations across all validation trials consistently fall within the ideal range of .46 to .74, confirming that each individual item contributes meaningfully to the overall scale score without redundant overlap.

Test-Retest Stability

Because the BRS is designed to measure resilience as a relatively stable trait-like disposition (the typical tendency to recover) rather than a fluctuating affective state, temporal stability is critical. Smith et al. (2008) tested temporal stability in Sample 2 over a one-month test-retest interval, obtaining a Pearson correlation coefficient of r = .69 (p < .001), indicating substantial stability over time in young adults experiencing normative academic life stressors.

Subsequent long-term stability investigations over intervals ranging from 3 months to 12 months have yielded test-retest coefficients between .62 and .74. In intervention trials targeting cognitive-behavioral stress management or mindfulness training, the BRS has also proven sensitive to therapeutic change, exhibiting significant post-treatment increases that remain stable at follow-up assessments.

Factor Analysis

The latent structural dimensionality of the Brief Resilience Scale has been the focus of considerable psychometric exploration. Researchers have employed both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to determine whether the instrument represents a single unidimensional construct or a multidimensional structure driven by item valence.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In the seminal psychometric work by Smith et al. (2008), principal components analyses (PCA) and maximum likelihood factor analyses with varimax and oblimin rotations were conducted across all four samples. In each sample, the analyses yielded a single primary eigenvalue exceeding 1.0 (with empirical eigenvalues ranging from 3.12 to 3.65), explaining between 53.2% and 67.0% of the total variance across items. The scree plots clearly revealed a steep initial drop followed by a distinct elbow at the second factor, supporting a unidimensional structure.

Standardized factor loadings on the primary unrotated factor across all four original samples were uniformly high and consistent:

• Item 1 (“bounce back quickly”): Loadings ranging from .68 to .83
• Item 2 [R] (“hard time making through”): Loadings ranging from .67 to .76
• Item 3 (“not take me long to recover”): Loadings ranging from .73 to .84
• Item 4 [R] (“hard for me to snap back”): Loadings ranging from .71 to .81
• Item 5 (“come through difficult times with little trouble”): Loadings ranging from .61 to .75
• Item 6 [R] (“take a long time to get over set-backs”): Loadings ranging from .66 to .82

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Method Effects

Subsequent psychometric investigations evaluating large-scale international cohorts (e.g., Chmitorz et al., 2018; Rodríguez-Rey et al., 2016; Kyriazos et al., 2018) compared several competing latent factor models:

• Model 1: Strict Unidimensional Model. All 6 items load onto a single global resilience latent factor without error covariances. In several large samples, this model yielded acceptable to marginal fit indices: χ²/df > 4.0, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≈ .07–.09, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) ≈ .92–.95, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≈ .04–.05.
• Model 2: Two-Factor Correlated Model (Valence Splitting). Positively phrased items (1, 3, 5) load on a “bouncing back” factor, and negatively phrased items (2, 4, 6) load on a “succumbing to stress” or vulnerability factor. This model typically produces improved numerical fit (CFI > .97, RMSEA < .05), but the inter-factor correlation between the two latent dimensions is exceptionally high (often r = -.80 to -.92).
• Model 3: Bifactor / Correlated Trait-Correlated Uniqueness (CTCU) Model. A substantively meaningful single general factor representing overall resilience, accompanied by orthogonal method-specific factors accounting for the negative item wording artifacts, or correlated error variances among items 2, 4, and 6. This formulation consistently yields the best structural fit across international datasets (χ²/df < 2.5, CFI > .98, TLI > .97, RMSEA ≤ .042, SRMR ≤ .025).

Psychometric consensus indicates that the statistical emergence of two latent dimensions in exploratory models is a classical methodological artifact resulting from positive versus negative item polarity (the “reverse phrasing effect”), rather than a genuine conceptual multidimensionality. Consequently, the Brief Resilience Scale is universally conceptualized and scored as a strictly unidimensional assessment of general stress recovery capability.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Brief Resilience Scale (BRS)
• Acronym: BRS
• Developers: Bruce W. Smith, Jeanne Dalen, Kathryn Wiggins, Erin Tooley, Paula Christopher, and Jennifer Bernard (2008)
• Test Type: Psychometric self-report screening inventory / dimensional psychological scale
• Format: Paper-and-pencil or computer-administered questionnaire; single-page layout; easily integrated into digital health portals and mobile survey systems
• Administration Mode: Individual self-administration (supervised or unsupervised)
• Target Population: Adolescents, university students, general adult community samples, geriatric cohorts, and diverse clinical and somatic patient populations (e.g., cardiac, oncology, rheumatology, chronic pain)
• Completion Time: 1 to 2 minutes
• Item Count: 6 items
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert rating format:
• 1 = Strongly Disagree
• 2 = Disagree
• 3 = Neutral
• 4 = Agree
• 5 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring and Transformation Procedures:
  • Reverse Scoring: Items 2, 4, and 6 are negatively phrased and must be mathematically inverted prior to computing scale aggregates. The reverse scoring formula is:
    
    Transformed Score = 6 – Original Raw Score (i.e., 1 becomes 5, 2 becomes 4, 3 remains 3, 4 becomes 2, and 5 becomes 1).
  • Scale Total / Mean Calculation: After recoding items 2, 4, and 6, sum the responses to all 6 items and divide by 6. This produces a continuous mean composite score ranging from 1.00 to 5.00:
    
    BRS Mean Score = (Item 1 + Item 2_Recoded + Item 3 + Item 4_Recoded + Item 5 + Item 6_Recoded) / 6
  • Missing Data Threshold: In cases of missing data, if at least 5 of the 6 items are completed, the score can be calculated as the mean of the completed items; if more than one item is omitted, the scale score should be treated as missing.
• Normative Interpretation and Cutoff Thresholds: Based on normative data across general and clinical populations published by Smith et al. (2010):
  • 1.00 to 2.99: Low Resilience (indicates marked vulnerability to stress, prolonged recovery latency, and elevated risk for depressive and psychosomatic symptom exacerbation).
  • 3.00 to 4.30: Normal / Typical Resilience (indicates average adaptive recovery capacity consistent with standard adult community norms).
  • 4.31 to 5.00: High Resilience (indicates exceptional stress agility, rapid homeostatic re-equilibration, and high psychological hardiness).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2008 (empirical validation published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine).
• Copyright & Ownership: Bruce W. Smith and co-authors; original article publication rights held by the International Society of Behavioral Medicine (Springer Nature).
• Licensing and Accessibility: The Brief Resilience Scale is in the public domain for research and non-profit clinical practice. No formal commercial licensing fees, registration charges, or royalty payments are required for academic scholars, students, or clinicians utilizing the scale for non-commercial investigations or clinical patient assessments.
• Commercial and Digital Redistribution: Commercial entities seeking to embed the scale within commercial digital wellness apps, proprietary employee assistance platforms, or monetized psychometric assessment software must obtain formal written permission from the lead author and comply with international copyright provisions.
• Citation Requirement: The authors request that whenever the instrument is administered, published, or cited, standard scholarly attribution be provided via reference to the foundational 2008 publication (Smith et al., 2008).

References

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• Cannon, W. B. (1932). The Wisdom of the Body. W. W. Norton & Company.
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• Kyriazos, P. C., Stalikas, A., Prassa, K., Galanakis, M., Yotsidi, V., & Dimitriadou, K. (2018). Psychometric properties of the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) in a Greek sample. Psychology, 9(5), 1170–1197. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2018.95072
• Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Springer Publishing Company.
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• Rodríguez-Rey, R., Alonso-Tapia, J., & Hernansaiz, H. (2016). Reliability and validity study of the Brief Resilience Scale in Spanish adults. Psychological Assessment, 28(5), e101–e110. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000191
• 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. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705500802222972
• Smith, B. W., Epstein, E. M., Ortiz, J. A., Christopher, P. J., & Tooley, E. M. (2010). The foundations of resilience: What are the critical resources for bouncing back from stress? In S. Prince-Embury & D. H. Saklofske (Eds.), Resilience in Children, Adolescents, and Adults: Translating Research into Practice (pp. 167–187). Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4939-3_13
• Soer, R., Bieleman, H. J., Bültmann, U., & Reneman, M. F. (2019). Measurement properties of the Dutch Brief Resilience Scale in workers with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Disability and Rehabilitation, 41(10), 1206–1211. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2018.1424953

Items of the Scale