Development of the Widowhood Resilience Scale (WRS): Assessing resilience behaviors at the crossroads of change

<p>Samuel J Dreeben and Carrie L West</p>

Development of the Widowhood Resilience Scale (WRS): Assessing resilience behaviors at the crossroads of change

Samuel J Dreeben and Carrie L West

Schreiner University, USA

: Int J Ment Health Psychiatry

Abstract

Widowhood researchers have been increasingly interested in the construct of resilience and identifying factors which contribute to adaptive responses to conjugal loss. Available measures of general resilience were validated on non-widowed samples and broadly lack face validity for use with widowed people. This presentation reports the development and validation of a resilience scale specific to widowhood, the Widowhood Resilience Scale (WRS). Initially qualitative responses from 744 widowed people were analyzed and cross-referenced with existing literature on resilience to develop 49 items. The 49 items were tested on a sample of 1188 widowed people, resulting in a 6 factor, 25-item scale.