Psychometric properties of the Italian version of Resilience Scale in adults and elderly healthy subjects.

Background: Resilience is a complex personality characteristic of people facing a significant change, adversity, distress, acute or chronic disease. The Wagnild and Young Resilience Scale is an appropriate instrument to study resilience and has been already validated in the Italian young-adult population. Objective: To verify psychometric properties of the Italian version of the RS scale in adults and elderly healthy subjects. Design: The participants filled out RS questionnaire; statistical analysis was performed to evaluate psychometric properties of the scale. Setting: University of Genoa: courses reserved for elderly people and Clinical Neurology outpatients' department. Participants: 178 adults and elderly healthy subjects. Measurement: The Italian version of RS scale and three associate questionnaire (General Health Questionnaire, Ego-Resilience Scale, Beck Depression Inventory) were used to assess concurrent validity of RS, its reliability, stability, internal consistency and concurrent validity. Results: Time stability was assessed in a sub-sample of 48 subjects (Mean age = 68.89 yr, SD 7.54) by test-retest correlation (r=0.80). RS reliability was evaluated in the whole sample of 178 subjects (Mean age = 63.92 yr, SD 14.6) with an RS mean score of 138.43 (SD 14.6). Internal consistency was evaluated by Cronbach alpha (?=0.86). Concurrent validity was assessed by correlation with General Health Questionnaire (r=-0.45), Ego-Resilience Scale (r=0.59) and Beck Depression Inventory (r=-0.31). Principal component analysis resulted into six components, labelled according to the best association with the five components hypothesized by Wagnild and Young (i.e.: meaningfulness, self-reliance, perseverance, existential aloneness, equanimity a and b). Conclusion: Our data indicate that the Italian version of the RS scale is a reliable tool in the adults and elderly subjects in order to promote interventions and stress-management to improve resilience and facilitate successful aging.