Workplace and academic buoyancy - Psychometric assessment and construct validity amongst school personnel and students

Buoyancy is individuals' ability to successfully deal with setbacks and challenges that are typical of everyday life-an "everyday resilience." From a construct validity perspective, then, the present study conducts a psychometric scoping of buoyancy in the school setting. The study comprised 3,450 high school students and 637 school personnel administered the Buoyancy Scale, along with the Motivation and Engagement Scale and cognate measures. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized factor structure of the Buoyancy Scale for personnel and students and invariance in factor loadings suggested similarity in constructs across samples. Reliability and distribution properties were also consistent across samples. Structural equation modeling showed males to be more buoyant in both samples, but opposite age effects were found with higher bouyancy amongst younger respondents in the student sample and older respondents in the workplace sample. Findings demonstrated broad congruency across samples in key relationships between buoyancy and hypothesized correlates. © 2008 Sage Publications