Are In-the-Moment Resilience Processes Predicted by Questionnaire-Based Measures of Resilience?

Research on resilience is a growing field, and resilience has been conceptualized and operationalized in multiple ways. The aim of this study was to compare the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS), a conventional measure of resilience, with within-person process indicators derived from experience sampling method (ESM). A sample of 177 teachers from southern Finland participated in the study, commencing with a startup session followed by an 8-day ESM period. Through twice-daily prompts, participants reported their immediate positive and negative affect as well as recent stressors encountered, such as workload and challenging social interactions. As expected, within-person variation in affect was predicted by stressors. However, contrary to expectations, individual differences in affective reactivity to stressors were not predicted by BRCS (beta positive affect [95% CI] = -.20, [-.51, .11]; beta negative affect = .33, [-.07, .69]). Item response theory analyses of the BRCS revealed problems with precision. The results call into question the validity of measuring resilience using single administrations of retrospective self-report questionnaires such as the BRCS.