Capturing Resilience in Context: Development and Validation of a Situational Judgment Test of Resilience

We developed a 40-item situational judgment test (R-SJT) to capture resilience in context. The scoring key was developed using a crowd-sourcing method (N = 100) and pilot-tested (N = 62). A new sample (N = 208) was used to investigate validity of the R-SJT scores. The R-SJT scores demonstrated acceptable levels of internal consistency, convergent validity, and evidence of better discriminant and criterion-related validity, compared to three Likert-type resilience measures. Scores on the R-SJT moderately correlated with the three resilience scales and personality measures including hardiness, negative affect, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. The R-SJT showed incremental validity beyond traditional resilience measures and personality for criterion measures of psychological adjustment (i.e., depression, anxiety, and stress). The R-SJT appears to be a viable instrument to measure resilience.