Background: In addressing mental health challenges in children, identifying cognitive and behavioral skills that promote resilience is crucial. Therefore, creating a comprehensive scale for teenage children is important in revealing patterns in resilience skills development over time.
Objective: This study aimed to develop a resilience skills scale for teenage children and test the validity and reliability of this scale.
Methods: To select a group of scale items for the creation of the scale, we conducted two surveys of professionals with experience in consultation practice and collected 30 items. Next, a survey was conducted with 6,971 participants ranging from elementary to high school students using these 30 items. The survey used the Resilience Scale for Junior High School Students, Stress Reaction Scale, and Truancy Tendency Scale as construct validity. Reliability was further examined using the retest method after a three-month interval.
Results: (１) The exploratory factor analysis of the scale revealed four factors: “Calm relations with self and others” (α= .83, 8 items), referring to calmly perceive and act on your own and others' situations; “Positive Self-Awareness” α= .82, 4 items), referring to recognize positive aspects of self; “routine behavior” (α= .65, 3 items), referring to the ability to create and follow one's own routine; and “self-care” (α= .64, 2 items), referring to practice relaxation. (２) Significant positive correlations were found between the four subscales of the Resilience Skills Scale for Teenage children (RSS-TC) and all subscales of the Resilience Scale for Junior High School Students (r= .278 to .794, all p<.01). Significant negative correlations (r= －.111 to －.491, all p<.01) were found between all subscales of the Stress Reaction Scale and all subscales of the RSS-TC and weak to moderate negative correlations were found between all subscales and the Tendency toward Non-Attendance at School Scale. (３) The test-retest analysis conducted after three months indicated moderate correlation coefficients (r= .57 to .77). (４) A two-factor analysis of variance with school type (elementary, junior, and high school) and gender (boys and girls) as independent variables revealed significant interactions for all subscales.
Conclusion: These results confirmed the usefulness of the RSS-TC from 4th grade elementary school to high school students.
