Hardiness Scale

What is the Hardiness Scale?

The Hardiness Scale, formally known as the "Dispositional Resilience (Hardiness) Scale (HARDY)" or DRS-15 is a psychological tool used to assess a person's psychological hardiness, or resilience, across three key dimensions: Commitment (CM), Control (CO), and Challenge (CH). These factors collectively represent a broad hardiness factor, which helps in understanding how individuals cope with stress and change.

The scale was developed based on the Hardiness Scale originally developed by Kobasa (1979), a widely recognized measure of personality hardiness that identifies individuals who tend to remain healthy and perform well under stress. The DRS-15 is shorter and more reliable construct valid hardiness measure. The current DRS-15 scale traces its origins from a 53-item version used in the 1980s with Illinois Bell executives. Over time, this scale evolved through refinements, including a 50-item version (Bartone, 1989) for city bus drivers, followed by a 45-item version and later a 30-item scale (Bartone, 1991).

Various tools have been developed to measure hardiness, with the short hardiness measure like the Dispositional Resilience Scale (DRS-15) by Paul Bartone (2013) being among the most widely used. However, limitations in its reliability and construct validity prompted the development of a new hardiness scale, such as the Hardiness Resilience Gauge (HRG).

High scores on the hardiness test correlate with active problem-solving, reduced anxiety and PTSD symptoms, and greater well-being. Furthermore, the scale examines distinct hardiness facets, providing a detailed view of how commitment, control, and challenge contribute to overall resilience.

Despite multiple methods of measuring hardiness, the Hardiness Scale is based on the DRS-15, which is the most widely used method. It involves assessing a patient's psychological resilience across three dimensions: Commitment, Control, and Challenge. This process helps healthcare practitioners understand a patient's ability to cope with stress and adapt to challenges, aiding in personalized care and intervention strategies. Below are the steps for using the scale effectively.

Further psychometric improvements with military samples resulted in a scale (Bartone, 2013) with 15 items selected based on item distribution characteristics, item response theory plots, scale reliabilities, item-total correlations, and confirmatory factor analysis. This version demonstrates moderate to strong psychometric properties and validity, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.69 (Madrigal et al., 2016) and test-retest reliability of 0.78 over 3 weeks (Bartone, 2007). This 15-item version includes both positively and negatively keyed items across the three hardiness dimensions: commitment, control, and challenge. In a study of 700 Army reservists, the scale showed good reliability with a Cronbach's alpha of .83 for the total measure and varying alphas for the individual theoretically relevant outcome measures.

Respondents with higher scores on the Hardiness Scale are less likely to use negative coping strategies compared. As such, they tend to show fewer symptoms of stress-related disorders, such as PTSD, highlighting the hardiness resilience gauge as an effective tool for identifying protective traits. The hardiness challenge dimension reveals a person’s openness to change, which is vital for managing stress effectively.

How to use our  Hardiness Scale template?

Our template contains the DRS-15 as it is one of the most commonly used, reliable, and easy-to-use Hardiness Scale available. While the DRS-15 is commonly used for researching hardiness and resilience in a specific demographic, it may also be used for assessing individual patients. Below are the steps for using the scale effectively:

Step 1: Access the scale template

The Hardiness Scale template is available within this guide, making it easy for healthcare professionals to access and use in patient assessments. Simply click "Use template" to open the template in the Carepatron app, which lets you customize it before filling or printing it out. You may also get a fillable but non-customizable PDF by clicking "Download."

Step 2: Use the scale

This scale may be used for researching a demographic or individual screening. For population research, customize the questionnaire first to create a way for you to get results. For individual screening, you may administer this assessment as an interview, or you can ask the patient to fill out the questionnaire themselves. Ask the respondent to answer each statement on the scale using the provided options.

Step 3: Gather and interpret data

After the respondent/s have completed the scale, calculate their subscale scores for Commitment, Control, and Challenge. The total Hardiness Scale score will indicate the patient’s overall psychological hardiness, providing valuable insight into their coping mechanisms and resilience levels under stress.

Step 4: Utilize the results

After calculating individual results, you may start calculating the results for the whole sample population using your own formulae. If you used it for individual assessment, you may choose to review the results with the respondent based on your purpose for doing the test. For patients in need of improving their coping mechanisms, explain how their score reflects their ability to manage stress and adapt to challenges. Discuss their strengths and areas where they might benefit from developing greater resilience, focusing on practical strategies for improvement.

Scoring and interpretation

The Hardiness Scale is scored by assigning numerical values to responses, with the following options: "Not At All True" (0), "A Little True" (1), "Quite True" (2), and "Completely True" (3). Items marked with an asterisk (*) are reverse-scored, meaning the numerical values are inverted (e.g., a response of 0 becomes 3, 1 becomes 2, and so on). The scores for each dimension—Commitment (CM), Control (CO), and Challenge (CH)—are calculated by adding the corresponding responses from the relevant items.

The Hardiness Scale offers several benefits for assessing psychological resilience. Its factor structure is consistent, allowing medical professionals to accurately measure a patient’s hardiness across three key dimensions: commitment, control, and challenge.

For patients with lower scores, interventions can be implemented to improve their psychological hardiness and coping skills. The improved hardiness scale is a shorter version, making it more accessible for clinical use, while still providing valid and reliable data. Additionally, the scale can measure the more general hardiness factor and challenge scale scores, which helps clinicians better understand a patient’s ability to adapt to stressors and challenges in their environment.

This scale is primarily used in population research, so you may determine different scoring ranges yourself; however, Loche used the following bands in his dissertation in 2017, and you may use these bands if they fit your purpose:

• 39+: very high
• 34-38: high
• 28-33: average
• 22-27: low
• 22 or below: very low

Next steps

After completing the Hardiness Scale assessment, it’s important to guide patients based on their results. If the scale shows superior reliability and the factor structure is consistent, medical professionals should compute the total hardiness scores to assess the patient's resilience level. For those with low scores, it may indicate a need for intervention and resilience-building strategies to improve coping mechanisms and stress management. Patients with moderate scores can benefit from strategies to enhance their hardiness, focusing on strengthening the general hardiness factor. For those with high scores, it suggests strong resilience, though continued monitoring is advised to maintain their adaptive coping skills.

Patients with lower scores have lower personality hardiness, and as such may be at greater risk for conditions like posttraumatic stress disorder, as evidenced by fewer fewer posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in individuals with higher hardiness levels. For accurate assessment, medical professionals should also consider the test-retest reliability to ensure the scale’s stability over time. Encourage patients to adopt coping strategies that align with their specific hardiness dimensions—commitment, control, and challenge—based on their total standardized hardiness scores.

Lastly, if you used the DRS-15 for population research, then the biggest benefit is that you will be able to use the results and insight to inform future policies. This is especially important when creating support systems for people in high-stress positions and working conditions.

Benefits of using this scale

The Hardiness Scale offers several benefits for assessing psychological resilience and demographic research:

• Good psychometric properties: The DRS-15's has a factor structure consistent with hardiness theory, allowing medical professionals to accurately measure a patient’s hardiness across the three key dimensions: commitment, control, and challenge.
• Brevity and ease of use: The DRS-15 is short, making it more accessible for clinical use, while still providing valid and reliable data. Respondents are more likely to complete it because of it's length, compared to other 30-50 item scales.
• Usefulness in predicting outcomes: The DRS-15 has high construct validity and is great for predicting factors such as mental health and resilience, indicating its usefulness in identifying individuals who may be better equipped to handle stress. This makes it useful in screening people for specific roles and creating support systems for people in high-stress conditions.

References

Bartone, P. T. (1989). Predictors of stress-related illness in city bus drivers. Journal of Occupational Medicine, 31(8), 657–663. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45012581

Bartone, P. T. (2007). Test-Retest reliability of the Dispositional Resilience Scale-15, a brief hardiness scale. Psychological Reports, 101(3), 943–944. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.101.3.943-944

Bartone, P. T. (2013). Cross-cultural adaptation of the DRS-15 Dispositional Resilience Scale: A short hardiness measure. Fulbright Research Fellowship. Bergen, Norway. http://www.hardiness-resilience.com/docs/Cross-cultural%20adaptation%20of%20DRS%20Fulbright.pdf

Bartone, P. T. (2013). Cross-cultural adaptation of the DRS-15 Dispositional Resilience Scale: A short hardiness measure. Final report on Fulbright Research Fellowship.

Bartone, P. T., McDonald, K., Hansma, B. J., Stermac-Stein, J., Escobar, E. M. R., Stein, S. J., & Ryznar, R. (2022). Development and validation of an improved hardiness measure. European Journal of Psychological Assessment. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000709

Kobasa, S. C. (1979). Stressful life events, personality, and health: An inquiry into hardiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.1.1

Loche III, R. W. (n.d.). Psychological hardiness, big five personality, and demographic factors as predictors of college enrollment among military veterans [Dissertation]. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/215292751.pdf

Madrigal, L., Gill, D. L., & Eskridge, K. M. (n.d.). Examining the reliability, validity and factor structure of the DRS-15 with college athletes. Psihologijske Teme, 25(2), 263–280. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-43119-006