Measuring adolescent resilience: An examination of the cross-ethnic validity of the RS-14

Wagnild and Young's brief 14-item Resilience Scale (RS-14), derived from the widely used RS-25, offers potential for measuring adolescent resilience. However, there is minimal research on its psychometric strength with adolescent populations and no research on its applicability to early adolescents. This study assesses psychometric properties of the RS-14 with a large, ethnically diverse sample of early and middle adolescents. Principal component analysis finds a single factor structure. Cronbach's α for the aggregate sample was .91, ranging between .88 and .92 across racial/ethnic, gender, geographic, and age subgroups. Convergent validity is demonstrated with measures of both adolescent social self-efficacy and academic self-efficacy. Findings support the RS-14 as a useful instrument for assessing trait-like resilience in diverse early and middle adolescents. Brevity and ease of administration support its utility for resilience assessment in research and clinical settings.