A Reflective Thrive-Oriented Community Resilience Scale.

Abstract

There is substantial societal, policy, and research interest in community resilience as a way to better understand and enhance community thriving in the face of natural hazards, economic disruption, and other challenges. However, partly or fully formative community resilience measures potentially conflate resilience predictors and indicators, thereby constraining the assessment of factors promoting resilience. Based on a general population survey (N=1,072) in rural, coastal Oregon, USA, we evaluated a 6-item reflective thrive-oriented scale of perceived community resilience that provides a stronger foundation for assessing the contribution of resilience predictors such as community leadership or social capital. Exploratory factor analysis of the scale indicated a single-factor solution that explained 55% of the variance. The Cronbach's alpha was .83, which showed good internal consistency. Scale factor scores correlated with related constructs, with coefficients having signs and magnitudes consistent with prior research. The scale also provides a foundation for assessing general relative to specific (specified) resilience. In the present case, there was an indication of general resilience across the range of changes captured by the scale items.