Abstract
It is critical to understand the factors that increase risk for development of psychiatric disorders as well as promote resilience against disorders. The current study describes the development of a brief tool for risk/resilience assessment that takes a broad perspective of "risk" and "resilience" to characterize the phenomena, and assesses multiple factors that span intrapersonal, interpersonal, and wide-ranging external contexts. We administered twelve scales (212 items) to a diverse population comprising help-seeking and community participants (N = 298; 46% female) in the greater Philadelphia area. We used exploratory item-factor analysis to determine how items cluster across scales. After determining that a seven-factor solution was optimal, computerized adaptive testing (CAT) simulation was run to determine what would happen if the seven full-form factors were administered adaptively. These results were used to select items for short-form scales, producing seven final scales (items = 47). Validity was assessed by relating short-form scores to demographics, clinical diagnoses, scales, and criteria; these relationships were also compared to the relationships found with the original scales. Almost all effects detected by the twelve original scales were detected by the substantially abbreviated short-forms. The abbreviated battery shows promise for rapid assessment of multiple risk and resilience parameters, a necessity in large-scale studies.