Psychometric properties of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM – 28) among samples of French Canadian youth

OBJECTIVE: Explore the psychometric properties of the French Canadian version of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28, Resilience Research Center, 2009; Ungar et al., 2008) in youth samples. METHOD: Two investigations were conducted. Participants in Study 1 were 589 youth (60% female) in grades 10-12 from 2 urban public high schools. Participants in Study 2 were 246 youth (48% female) from a rural public high school, 28% from First Nations. All participants completed the French CYRM-28 and measures of self-esteem and self-acceptance/mindfulness. Participants in Study 2 completed additional measures evaluating their sense of empowerment, trauma symptoms, family problems, and relationship with parents. RESULTS: Factor analysis identified three components correlated to each other: individual, family and community resilience. Evidence provides initial support for the construct validity of the scale by correlations with measures of self-esteem, self-acceptance/mindfulness, empowerment, trauma symptoms, relationship with parents and differences according to gender and a history of sexual abuse. CONCLUSION: The present results, the first to explore the psychometric properties of the French version of the CYRM-28, provide preliminary data supporting the reliability and validity of a global scale including 27 items. However, our results reveal a different factorial structure compared to previous studies using the CYRM-28. Future studies are needed to further document the validity of the scale