Psychometric Evaluation of the Traditional Chinese Version of Resilience Scale-14 and the Assessment of the Resilience Level of Hong Kong Adolescents

Mental health problems in adolescents reflect a global problem that is becoming more prevalent in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, there is a significant change in family structure to small nuclear families. Children receive more attention and may even be overprotected by parents. Also, parents' great expectations for high academic achievement also contribute to the increase in mental health problems among adolescents in Hong Kong. The Polytechnic University and the Christian Family Service Centre conducted a mental health survey study of 12,518 Form 1 to Form 7 pupils from 2011 to 2014. Of the respondents, 62.1% demonstrated slight to very serious depression symptoms. Evidence has shown that depressive symptoms predict suicidal tendencies among adolescents.

Resilience effectively prevents the development of mental health problems and is associated with positive mental health outcomes in adolescents. Assessing resilience in adolescents is therefore crucial for developing a thorough understanding of their responses to stress and adversity. The literature reports various instruments used to assess resilience, such as the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and the Resilience Scale (RS). And translated version of RS-14 is also developed because of linguistic and cultural differences.

The proposed study will aim to translate the original RS-14 (English version) into traditional Chinese. It will then test the psychometric properties of the newly translated RS-14 to examine its factorial structure using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and CFA. Furthermore, using the newly validated RS-14, a survey will be conducted to assess the resilience level of a large sample group of Hong Kong Chinese adolescents.