Resilience Scale (BRS)
Resilience - how quickly you bounce back from setbacks
When life knocks you down, how fast do you bounce back? The BRS measures your psychological resilience - not how many problems you have, but how well you recover from them. 6 items, about 2 minutes.
What Is the Brief Resilience Scale?
Resilience sounds great in theory. But how do you actually measure whether you bounce back from stress — or get stuck?
The BRS is the shortest validated resilience scale out there. Six items, two minutes. Smith et al. (2008) built it to capture one specific thing: recovering from adversity. Not coping, not grit — the bounce-back factor.
It correlates positively with optimism and social support, and inversely with anxiety and depression. Internal consistency runs a = .80-.91 across different populations.
Scoring
Each item uses a 5-point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Items 2, 4, and 6 are reverse-scored. The final score is the average of all 6 items:
- 1.00 - 2.99: Low resilience — recovering from setbacks may be harder for you
- 3.00 - 4.30: Normal resilience — you bounce back about as well as most people
- 4.31 - 5.00: High resilience — you recover quickly from most difficulties
Reference
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.
Important Note
This is a screening tool, not a diagnostic instrument. Resilience varies across time and context — a low score does not mean you cannot recover, it means right now it might be harder than usual.
Scoring Guide
BRS scoring: Items 1, 3, 5 are forward-scored (1→1, 2→2, 3→3, 4→4, 5→5); Items 2, 4, 6 are reverse-scored (1→5, 2→4, 3→3, 4→2, 5→1). Total score range: 6-30. Mean reference: 1.00-3.00 low resilience, 3.01-4.00 normal resilience, 4.01-5.00 high resilience. Reliability: Cronbach α = 0.80-0.91 (Smith et al., 2008).Result Interpretation
Finish the 6 questions and you get your results straight away — no account, no sign-up, no waiting.
We calculate your total from your answers, then give you a plain-language explanation of what the numbers mean. Whenever possible, we also show how your results compare to population norms.
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