Resilience in adolescents: the development and preliminary psychometric testing of a new measure

The concept of resilience has captured the imagination of researchers and policy makers over the past two decades. However, despite the ever-growing body of resilience research, there is a paucity of relevant measurement tools. In this thesis the development of a comprehensive and theoretically driven measure of resilience in adolescents is detailed. Development of the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire was guided by an extensive review of the resilience literature and pertinent theoretical frameworks, supplemented by focus groups with young people dealing with adversity in the form of a chronic illness. Scale development and item selection were finalised after two rounds of data collection and revision. The first revision of the conceptually developed questionnaire was conducted using data collected from a sample of adolescents living with a chronic illness and a sample of private secondary school students. The second revision was conducted using data collected from a population sample of year 7 and 9 secondary school students. Factor and scale analysis facilitated the construction of robust scales with acceptable alpha coefficients. The new scales notably reflected the conceptually proposed scales. The Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire encompasses resilience factors in the multiple domains of individual characteristics, family, peers, school and community. It is anticipated that, following further psychometric testing, this new measure of resilience will provide researchers and clinicians with a comprehensive instrument to measure a young person's capacity to achieve positive outcomes despite life stressors.