Measuring resilience for Chinese-speaking populations: a systematic review of Chinese resilience scales

Zhenyu Tian; Kai Kuang; Steven R Wilson; Patrice M Buzzanell; Jinyi Ye; Xinyue Mao; Hai Wei

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1293857

Measuring resilience for Chinese-speaking populations: a systematic review of Chinese resilience scales

Front Psychol. 2024 Mar 28:15:1293857. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1293857. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Zhenyu Tian¹, Kai Kuang², Steven R Wilson³, Patrice M Buzzanell³, Jinyi Ye², Xinyue Mao², Hai Wei²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Communication Studies, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, United States.
² School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
³ Department of Communication, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States.

Abstract

Introduction: Despite the rapid growth of interdisciplinary resilience research in Chinese contexts, no study has systematically reviewed individual-level measurement scales for Chinese-speaking populations. We report a systematic review of scales developed for or translated/adapted to Chinese-speaking contexts, where we assessed how widely used scales fare in terms of their psychometric qualities.

Methods: Studies included in this review must have been published in peer-reviewed English or Chinese journals between 2015-2020 and included self-reported resilience scales in Chinese-speaking populations. Searches were conducted in PsycINFO, CNKI (completed in May 2021), and PubMed (completed in January 2024). We developed coding schemes for extracting relevant data and adapted and applied an existing evaluation framework to assess the most frequently used resilience scales by seven methodological criteria.

Results: Analyses of 963 qualified studies suggested that Chinese resilience scales were used in a diverse range of study contexts. Among 85 unique kinds of resilience measures, we highlighted and evaluated the three most frequently used translated scales and three locally developed scales (nine scales in total including variations such as short forms). In short, resilience studies in Chinese contexts relied heavily on the translated 25-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, which scored moderately on the overall quality. The locally developed Resilience Scale for Chinese Adolescents and Essential Resilience Scale received the best ratings but could use further development.

Discussion: We discussed how future work may advance widely used scales, and specified seven methodological recommendations for future resilience scale development with existing and new scales in and beyond the Chinese study contexts. We further addressed issues and challenges in measuring resilience as a process and called on researchers to further develop/evaluate process measures for Chinese-speaking populations.

Keywords: Chinese cultural contexts; cross-cultural scale adaptation; measurement; resilience; scale development; systematic review.

Publication types

Systematic Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The project was partially supported by ZT’s startup research funds granted by the College of Wooster for open access publishing, and by the second author’s University Initiative Scientific Research Program at Tsinghua University (2022THZWJC07) for the research process.