Brief Resilience Scale (BRS)

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the theoretical foundation, development, and validation, summary of initial findings, and guide for using the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) in mindfulness research. The BRS is a 6-item scale designed to measure resilience in its original meaning – as the ability to bounce back from stress. As of mid-2022, the BRS has been cited over 3800 times on Google Scholar, translated into over a dozen languages, and used around the world in more than two dozen countries. This chapter will present our validation data and additional data from a review of 140 studies showing that the BRS is reliable, valid, and consistently related to mental health and other important variables. This includes concurrent validity through consistent positive correlations with other protective factors, including mindfulness, and negative correlations with risk factors. It also includes predictive validity through consistent positive correlations with measures of positive mental health and negative correlations with measures of negative mental health. There are also 18 intervention studies presented, including 9 with mindfulness-based interventions, showing that BRS scores may be increased by interventions. Finally, the chapter presents clear guidelines for using the scale including directions for scoring and norms and cut-offs for interpreting scores. Overall, the BRS may be an important scale to include in mindfulness research because mindfulness has been consistently related to it, mindfulness interventions have increased BRS scores, and it may be a primary indicator and mediator of the beneficial effects of mindfulness.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Bruce W. Smith, Naila deCruz-Dixon, Kaitlyn Schodt & Faerl Torres

1. Bruce W. Smith