An examination of the psychometric properties of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 (CD-RISC10) among accounting and business students

Abstract

Using a sample of 546 undergraduate accounting and business students from four US universities, one on the East Coast, two in the South, and one on the West Coast, this study examined the efficacy of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 (Campbell-Sills & Stein, 2007; CD-RISC 10) for use with accounting and other designated business majors. The analyses included an examination of possible demographic differences in overall score, the scale’s factor structure, the invariance of its factor structure across major and gender, the scale’s reliability, and its convergent and divergent validity. The results indicate significant inter-major and gender differences in scores. Most troubling, female accounting majors report the lowest resilience levels, significantly below those recorded for male accounting majors, and male and female non-accounting majors. However, the scale has a common factor structure. We further find that a two-factor solution provides a superior fit to the data compared to the single factor structure used in most prior research. Spearman-Brown reliability coefficients, item-total correlations, and coefficient alphas each support the reliability of the items loading on the scale for the full sample, as well as for each of the above-referenced demographic subsamples.