Center for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive Behavioral Intervention

The Resilience Scale (RS-25) is an instrument developed by Wagnild and Young (1993) to assess resilience levels in adults. In Portugal, the RS-25 was studied in adolescent samples by Felgueiras, Festas and Vieira (2010) that performed its translation and adaptation and obtained inconsistent results relating the replication of the original unifactorial structure of the scale suggested by Wagnild e Young (2009a). Pinheiro & Matos (2013a, 2013b) redefined some items of the scale and studied the construct validity of RS for the adolescent population, creating the Portuguese long version, composed by 23 items, and the short version with only 13
items. The present research intended to verify, in a sample composed by adults, the unidimensional structure proposed by original authors, and confirmed by Pinheiro e Matos (2013a) and Oliveira, Matos, Pinheiro and Oliveira (2015). The sample consisted of 580 parents, mostly female, who participated in the study “Prevention of adolescent depression: efficacy study of an intervention with adolescents and parents” (PTDC/MHC-PCL/4824/2012). An Exploratory Factor Analysis and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis were performed to test the factorial structure of the RS25 and the internal consistency of the scale was studied. A unifactorial structure was obtained consisting of 23 items. The obtained Cronbach’s alpha revealed excellent internal consistency, with a value of .943. Based on the psychometric properties obtained, it is concluded that RS23, long version, is a reliable measure to assess the resilience of the Portuguese adult population.