Brief Resilience Scale (BRS)

Access a free Brief Resilience Scale Template for the psychometric assessment of resilience.

By Carepatron Team on Aug 2, 2025.

Fact Checked by Ericka Pingol.

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What is the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS)?

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is a psychological measure designed to quantify a person's ability to 'bounce back' or recover from stressful events or trauma. Participants are asked to rate the extent to which they agree with six key statements designed to assess resilience. Answer scores are added to give an overall score of perceived stress resistance.

The BRS is a new resilience scale designed to quickly and accurately assess an individual's psychological reserve during extreme stress or trauma. Resilience (specifically defined as the perceived ability to bounce back following stressful events) is the sole psychometric construct measured.

BRS can be a convenient screening tool for identifying which individuals are likely to require psychological support or intervention following trauma exposure. This is especially useful when a comprehensive psychological assessment is not feasible, or when large groups of people need to be screened.

The BRS is a versatile tool that provides valid information about people coping with a range of stressors, including people recovering from trauma or health-related stressors, such as chronic pain patients.

Like other resilience measures that rely on self-report data, the BRS is subject to reporter biases and demand characteristics that can impact the objectivity of the results. However, unlike other resilience measures, it does not measure factors that may promote resilience such as personal characteristics or social support.

Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) Template

Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) PDF Template

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How to use our Brief Resilience Scale template

Here are the key steps to using our BRS template:

Step 1: Access the template

Download the free Brief Resilience Scale Template using the link on this page. Provide the person or group of people being evaluated with a digital or hard copy.

Step 2: Input personal information

Instruct the test taker to input key identification information, including their name and contact details.

Step 3: Complete the questionnaire

Instruct the test taker to respond to each of the following statements by indicating their agreement level on a five-point scale (from strongly disagree to strongly agree).

Scoring and interpretation of the Brief Resilience Scale

The scale consists of three negatively worded items and three positively worded items, with scoring adjusted for consistent directionality. Each item can be answered with one of five levels possible levels of agreement, each with a corresponding number of points (e.g. strongly disagree = 5).

Sum the given score for each of the six items, to get a total score between 6 and 30. Next, divide the total score by the number of questions answered to produce an average score over the six items. Higher scores indicate high resilience, whereas lower scores indicate less adaptive or worse resilience processes. The overall resilience score will fall into one of three categories:

Low resilience - 1.00 - 2.99
Normal resilience - 3.00 - 4.31
High resilience - 4.31 - 5.00

Next steps

After, interpreting the results fot the BRS, here are the next steps:

Identify at-risk individuals

If the BRS has been administered to a group of people, identify which among them have achieved a 'low resilience' score. These people may be more vulnerable to psychological distress following traumatic or stressful events.

Make appropriate referrals

Putting appropriate interventions in place for people with low resilience is crucial. If a patient has low resilience and has endured known stressors or traumas, this may include referring them for counselling or therapy.

If the BRS has been administered to large groups, it may be prudent to send those with low scores information about where to seek psychological help should they undergo a highly stressful event (e.g. helplines and counselling services).

Adjust treatment plans

The BRS is sometimes used by psychologists as part of a comprehensive evaluations of new patients. If the patient achieves a low score, this may indicate targeting resilience and coping skills would be a valuable treatment strategy.

Benefits of using our Brief Resilience Scale template

Here are some of the benefits of using this template:

Efficient

Unlike previous resilience measures, the BRS is a simple and quick method for assessing resilience. Using Carepatron's BRS convenient template further streamlines the process of evaluating resilience by providing a ready-to-go, fillable version.

User-friendly

Our free BRS template can be printed or filled digitally and comes with straightforward, easy-to-follow instructions for using and interpreting the psychometric measure.

Cost-effective and accessible

Our BRS template is a free and high-quality resource for effectively and inexpensively flagging individuals with low resiliency.

Commonly asked questions

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is a versatile tool applicable in a range of contexts pertaining to physical and mental health. General practitioners, psychologists, psychiatrists and experts in behavioral medicine may all benefit from using the BRS template with their patients.

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is a new brief resilience scale that measures someone's ability to bounce back or recover from stressful events or traumas. It is distinct from other resilience scales as it only detects individual differences in resilience capacity, not situational factors that promote resilience.

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is used to flag individuals who may be more vulnerable to psychological decline during stressful periods or less equipped to cope with traumatic events. Higher scores indicate greater resilience. High BRS scores are negatively related to anxiety, depression, negative affect, and physical symptoms.