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Family Resilience Scale: Development and Factor Structure

Windle (2011) defines resilience as process of managing and adapting to significant sources of risk. Assets and resources within the individual, their life and environment (protective factors) facilitate this capacity for adaptation and 'bouncing back' (good outcome) in the face of adversity. Construct of family resilience is relatively new and there are many challenges in it's conceptualization and operationalization but it could be perceived from aforementioned perspective. The team of the project “FamResPlan” within which the research was conducted encountered difficulty in measuring resilience, mainly due to lack of satisfactory instruments. Therefore, Family Resilience Scale was created based on Walsh model of family resilience (2002). The model consists of three key processes (protective factors) with each process consisting of three sub-processes: 1. Belief systems (make meaning of adversity, positive outlook, transcendence and spirituality), 2. Organizational patterns (flexibility, connectedness and social and economic resources), 3. Communication/problem solving (clear and consistent messages, open emotional expression and collaborative problem solving). Accordingly, Family Resilience Scale was constructed to measure three separate dimensions of family resilience: 1. Family communication and problem solving (13 items, e.g. In our family we show each other how we feel), 2. Family belief system (11 items, e.g. Spirituality gives meaning to our family’s life) and 3. Family organization (19 items, e.g. In our family we share responsibilities). Family organization subscale contains 11 items from FACES IV (Olson, Gorall, Tiesel, 2004). Family Resilience Scale was applied to a sample of 403 first year college students (37, 5% male students). Average students’ age was 19 years (SD=1, 238). Separate factor analysis for each dimension of family resilience were conducted. For the Family communication and problem solving factor, analysis had shown that there is one significant factor and that all 13 items have saturations above , 30 on this factor. Items that measure Family belief system also shown one significant factor but two items had nonsignificant factor saturations so they were excluded from the scale. Items that measure Family organization grouped into one significant factor, but two items were also excluded due to a nonsignificant saturation on that factor. Final version of Family resilience scale consists of 39 items and measures three dimensions.

family resilience, scale development, factor structure

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