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A Reflective Thrive‐Oriented Community Resilience Scale
Author(s) -
Lindberg Kreg,
Swearingen Tommy
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1002/ajcp.12416
Subject(s) - thriving , community resilience , scale (ratio) , psychology , psychological resilience , population , exploratory factor analysis , cronbach's alpha , resilience (materials science) , social psychology , health psychology , applied psychology , developmental psychology , environmental health , public health , geography , psychometrics , medicine , engineering , cartography , redundancy (engineering) , reliability engineering , psychotherapist , physics , nursing , thermodynamics
There is substantial societal, policy, and research interest in community resilience as a way to better understand and enhance community thriving in the face of natural hazards, economic disruption, and other challenges. However, partly or fully formative community resilience measures potentially conflate resilience predictors and indicators, thereby constraining the assessment of factors promoting resilience. Based on a general population survey ( N = 1,072) in rural, coastal Oregon, USA, we evaluated a 6‐item reflective thrive‐oriented scale of perceived community resilience that provides a stronger foundation for assessing the contribution of resilience predictors such as community leadership or social capital. Exploratory factor analysis of the scale indicated a single‐factor solution that explained 55% of the variance. The Cronbach’s alpha was .83, which showed good internal consistency. Scale factor scores correlated with related constructs, with coefficients having signs and magnitudes consistent with prior research. The scale also provides a foundation for assessing general relative to specific (specified) resilience. In the present case, there was an indication of general resilience across the range of changes captured by the scale items.