An international team of investigators in 11 countries have worked collaboratively to develop a culturally and contextually relevant measure of youth resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28). The team used a mixed methods design that facilitated understanding of both common and unique aspects of resilience across cultures. Quantitative and qualitative stages to its development ensure the CYRM-28 has good content-related validity across research sites. Crossover comparison analyses of the findings from the quantitative administration of the pilot measure with 1,451 youth and qualitative interviews with 89 youth support the CYRM-28 as a culturally sensitive measure of youth resilience. The implications of this mixed methods approach to the development of measures for cross-cultural research are discussed.

Objectives: This article presents the validation of the 28-item Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28) among two Canadian samples of youth with complex needs. Method: The CYRM-28 was administered to two groups of concurrent service using youth in Atlantic Canada ( n₁ = 497; n₂ = 410) allowing for use of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: Reproducibility agreement is achieved and subscales of the measure are confirmed and show adequate psychometric properties. Conclusions: Findings add support to the CYRM-28 as a reliable and valid self-report instrument that measures three components of resilience processes in the lives of complex needs youth. Advanced statistical modeling yielded evidence that the scale, originally developed for use in various countries, can be used to assess resilience in youth from various ethnocultural backgrounds in Atlantic Canada.

Resilience researchers from diverse disciplines and cultural settings face formidable challenges in conceptualizing and developing standardized metrics of resilience that are representative of adolescent and young adult experiences across cultures. We discuss these issues using the case example of a pilot study involving researchers in 14 sites in 11 countries. The goal of the International Resilience Project was to develop a culturally and contextually relevant measure of youth resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM). Cultural sensitivity and an iterative research design introduced to the study a number of problems that future studies of resilience will need to address: ambiguity in the definition of positive outcomes; a lack of predictability of models across cultures; and measurement design challenges.