Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Brief Resilience Scale in Deployed and Non-Deployed Soldiers

The United States military has made substantial investments in programs designed to increase resilience in military personnel. In tandem with this effort, there has been considerable research into the measurement of this construct. The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is one of the most efficient and commonly used measures of resilience, despite conflicting empirical assessments of the measure’s unidimensional factor structure, potentially due to method effects tied to item wording. In the present study, a sample of 3,030 active-duty U.S. Army soldiers, comprising two occupational contexts (garrison and combat deployment), completed the BRS as well as measures of adverse behavioral health. Multiple factor structure types, derived from the existing civilian literature, were tested to identify the most stable structure in this sample. Results of CFA analyses indicated that a bifactor solution provided the best fit to these data. In addition, this structure was more conceptually coherent, relative to other structures tested. Measurement invariance analyses indicated that the factor structure held stable between the garrison and combat deployment contexts. As expected based on prior research, the BRS correlated negatively with measures of adverse behavioral health. Of note, comparative analyses showed that these correlations were stronger among soldiers in garrison than among soldiers in the combat deployment setting. Results support the use of the BRS with military personnel.