Assessing the psychometric properties of Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 25 (CD-RISC 25) in pharmacy students and academics in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

Abstract

Background: Resilience is a complex concept that is defined and influenced by the context of individuals, organisations, societies and cultures. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) is a widely used validated tool to evaluate psychological resilience. CD-RISC is a self-administered scale of twenty-five items, each rated by a 5-point Likert scale. The scale evaluates overall personal resilience through assessing five main resilience-related constructs; personal competence, trust in one's instincts, positive acceptance of change, control and spiritual influences. As per the scale's developers, higher scores reflecting greater level of resilience. This particular tool has not previously been tested with a pharmacy student or academic population sample.

Objective: This study aims to assess the factor structure, validity, and reliability of the CD-RISC-25 in a sample of pharmacy students and academics from faculties drawn across the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR).

Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out between October 2020 and January 2021 sampling pharmacy students and academics across the EMR who were invited to complete the self-administered CD-RISC 25 questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis using principal components analysis with oblique rotation was conducted on sample responses (n = 616). The internal consistency and reliability for each identified factor and from the CD-RISC scale was evaluated by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

Results: Five factors were isolated accounting for 51.5 % total cumulative model variance. Identification of factors showed high convergence with previous work on the CD-RISC resilience tool. The current study in our sample found a five-factor structure which differed from the original scale reliabilities. This study did identify a five-factor solution with differing item factor loadings. The reliability analysis on the CD-RISC-25 items in our study sample revealed an overall Cronbach Alpha value of 0.89; however, three items showed corrected Item-total correlations of <0.3. Our analysis, in this respondent sample, suggested a re-adjustment of the scale inclusions to improve overall scale stability and performance.

Conclusions: The current research findings propose a modified five-factor structure to resilience, with a 22-item unidimensional model of CD-RISC scale.

Keywords: CD-RISC; Confirmatory factor analysis; Eastern Mediterranean region; Pharmacy education; Psychological resilience.