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Brief Resilience Scale

BRS
psychologyhealth sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.

A 6-item unidimensional scale measuring resilience in its original sense: the ability to bounce back or recover from stress.

Items
6
Response format
5-point Likert
Version
1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Resilience was measured with the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS; Smith et al., 2008), a 6-item measure with good internal consistency (α = .80 to .91 across the four original samples).

Citing this in a methods section? This scale spans more than one discipline, so the style depends on where you publish. See the APA 7 or Vancouver guides, or compare all six citation styles.

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Reliability & validation

Validation population
Two undergraduate samples, cardiac patients, and women with and without fibromyalgia (Smith et al., 2008)
Test–retest
0.69
Cronbach's α
0.8–0.91

Response anchors

Strongly disagree · Disagree · Neutral · Agree · Strongly agree

Known limitations

Measures recovery from stress rather than protective resources, so it is not interchangeable with resource-based resilience scales (e.g., the CD-RISC). Half the items are reverse-worded, which can introduce method effects.

Original citation

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.

https://doi.org/10.1080/10705500802222972

Questions researchers ask

What does the BRS measure?

A 6-item unidimensional scale measuring resilience in its original sense: the ability to bounce back or recover from stress.

How many items does the BRS have?

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) has 6 items.

Is the BRS free to use?

The BRS is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the BRS reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.8–0.91, test–retest reliability of 0.69. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the BRS, and how do I cite it?

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. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705500802222972

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Related scales

CD-RISC-10Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10FFMQFive Facet Mindfulness QuestionnaireAUDITAlcohol Use Disorders Identification TestBAIBeck Anxiety InventoryBDI-IIBeck Depression Inventory-IIBrief-COPEBrief-COPE

Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.