Validity of a resilience scale (RESI-M) in indigenous women in Mexico

Abstract:

Resilience encompasses a series of capacities and skills that individuals acquire through interaction with their context, thus succeeding in overcoming their own limits of resistance by generating more efficient defensive and protective mechanisms and processes than before when exposed to adverse events. Resilience is assessed by measuring the adverse situation, successful adaptation, and the process, which has led to the development of a variety of instruments. There is no instrument in the literature that contemplates resilience from the cultural perspective of indigenous women, so the aim of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of scores obtained with the scale in this population group. The sample included 180 participants from various indigenous communities in Mexico, who were submitted to the Mexican Resilience Scale (RESI-M) developed by Palomar Lever & Gómez Valdez 2010. Internal consistency was assessed with the Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient, and the internal structure of each dimension was determined by principal components factor analysis with Varimax rotation. Mean age of participants was 33±9.4 years. Following analysis of the reliability and statistical validity, a final version of the instrument was obtained with 34 questions (from the original 43), with an acceptable reliability of 0.942 (Cronbach’s alpha) and with 6 factors that explain 56.34% of total variance. The version is valid and reliable, with a structure that allows assessing resilience as a process in indigenous women.

Keywords:
Validity and Reliability; Indigenous Population; Women