Approaches to measuring academic resilience: A systematic review

Abstract

Recent years have seen increased government funding into resilience-building programmes in schools. However, practitioners are unable to assess the efficacy of interventions due to the lack of an available measure of academic resilience. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the methods investigators have employed to measure academic resilience. A computerised literature search was conducted to identify journal articles where academic resilience was either; a) inferred through assessment of risk and positive adaptation or b) assessed using a measurement scale comprising protective factors. Results demonstrated significant variability in the factors utilised to represent risk and positive adaptation, and an inconsistent use of measurement scales. Different approaches to measuring academic resilience across studies leads to inconsistencies when estimating prevalence of the concept and the impact of resilience-based interventions. A discussion of the psychometric rigor of approaches to assessment is provided, with specific recommendations for future development of a measurement of academic resilience.