BRS: Brief Resilience Scale

The BRS is a 6-item validated measure of psychological resilience, the ability to bounce back from stress and adversity. Scores 1–5 across three resilience levels. Check the copyright holder's terms before clinical or commercial use.

What the BRS measures

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) was developed by Smith and colleagues (2008) to assess psychological resilience as a distinct construct, the ability to recover from stress, rather than resistance to stress or positive coping. It is the only measure designed specifically to assess this "bouncing back" dimension of resilience.

How to administer the BRS

The BRS is a self-report measure: respondents rate each item based on how they generally feel, so it can be completed independently in clinical, primary care, or research settings without a clinician interview.

The BRS consists of 6 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 5 = Strongly Agree). Three items are positively worded (1, 3, 5) and three are negatively worded (2, 4, 6). The negatively worded items are reverse-scored before computing the mean. The final score is the average of all 6 items and ranges from 1.00 to 5.00.

The BRS has been validated in clinical and community samples; check the copyright holder's terms before clinical or commercial use. It shows strong associations with stress, depression, anxiety, and physical health outcomes, making it a useful complement to depression and anxiety screening in mental health and primary care settings.

Rate each statement on how much you agree or disagree, based on how you generally feel.

For educational reference only. Does not constitute a clinical assessment.

BRS scoring and interpretation

Score is the mean of all 6 items (after reversing items 2, 4, 6), from 1.00 to 5.00; higher scores indicate greater resilience. The score interpreter above uses a commonly used clinical convention: 1.00–2.99 low resilience, 3.00–4.30 normal resilience, and 4.31–5.00 high resilience. These ranges are a practical reference, not diagnostic cutoffs.

Psychometric properties

In the development study, Smith et al. (2008) examined the BRS in four samples, including two student samples and samples of cardiac and chronic pain patients. The BRS was reliable and measured a unitary construct. It was negatively related to anxiety, depression, negative affect and physical symptoms even when other resilience measures, optimism, social support and Type D personality were controlled.

Translations have replicated these findings. The Spanish version showed adequate reliability (α = .83; intraclass coefficient = .69) and a single-factor structure in 620 adults (Rodríguez-Rey et al., 2016). The Polish version showed good internal consistency (0.88) and lower scores in groups with higher stress levels (Konaszewski et al., 2020).

Limitations

• Not diagnostic. The BRS measures the ability to recover from stress; it does not diagnose any mental health condition and is best used alongside depression, anxiety, or trauma screeners.
• Self-report. Scores reflect how respondents generally see themselves and can be affected by mood and response style.
• Bands are a convention. The low, normal and high ranges are a commonly used convention rather than validated clinical cutoffs.
• Brevity. With 6 items, the BRS captures one facet of resilience (bouncing back) and does not assess the resources that may promote resilience.

Measuring Resilience in HiBoop

HiBoop does not offer the BRS; this page is reference material. For wellbeing alongside symptoms, HiBoop offers the SWLS, PHQ-9, and GAD-7, with automated scoring and tracking over time.