Family Resilience Assessment Scale (FRAS-RII): A New Version

Abstract

Numerous versions of the Family Resilience Assessment Scale (FRAS) are constantly modified in order to make allowance for the limitations of previous versions. Approbation of the Family Resilience Assessment Scale (FRAS-RII), held in 2021, also showed the need to improve the instrument, verify its psychometric characteristics, which became the purpose of the current study. The study involved 627 respondents from Russia (n = 300) and Belarus (n = 327) aged from 18 to 67 years (average age of Russians 34.3 ± 12.5, average age of Belarusians 22.5 ± 7). We used the following methods: socio-demographic questionnaire, Family Resilience Assessment Scale FRASRII; Short version of Hardiness Survey; Test «Family Emotional Communications»; Revised questionnaire «Experience in Close Relationships». As a result, the optimal structure of the Family Resilience Assessment Scale FRAS-RII was elaborated with the psychometric characteristics indicating a high internal consistency of its five subscales. The subscales correlate with indicators of hardiness, family emotional communications, and experience in close relationships, indicating the external validity of the scale. The characteristics of family resilience differ depending on marital status and number of children in families, depending on the type of adverse event in the samples of Russians and Belarusians, which also confirms the applicability of the scale when working with different types of families. We may conclude that the FRAS-RII with its five subscales such as family communication and connectedness, positive outlook and problem solving, acceptance and flexibility, social resources, family spirituality, is a reliable, valid tool for research and for psychological help to Russian and Belarusian families.