The ¾«¶«´«Ã½ Dementia Resilience Scale is a psychometrically robust outcome measure (questionnaire) of resilience for people living with dementia. It may be useful for identifying strengths and areas of need for good person-centred care and support for people living with dementia. The BDRS may also be a useful strengths-based approach for evaluating the extent to which interventions and health and social care services improve resilience.
Developed at: ¾«¶«´«Ã½, Wales in collaboration with University College London and Nipissing University, Canada.
The Team: Gill Windle, Jennifer Rhiannon Roberts, Catherine Anne MacLeod, Zoe Hoare, Mary Pat Sullivan, Emilie Brotherhood, Joshua Stott, Paul Camic and Sebastian Crutch.
Number of questions: 19
Domains: ‘Outlook’, ‘Adaptation’, ‘Acceptance’, ‘community and peer support’ and ‘family and friends’.
Total score: Mean scores within each domain calculated leading to a score between 5 and 25.
The work follows rigorous methodology for developing health measurement scales. Stages of development included 1) a systematic review and psychometric evaluation of existing resilience measurement scales used with people living with dementia and their carers, finding that no outcome measures had been developed with, and for people living with dementia; 2) developing a new conceptual framework of resilience for people living with dementia through exploring academic literature and speaking to people living with dementia and their carers; 3) using that framework to draft questions and pilot test them with professionals, people living with dementia and their carers; and 4) field-testing the draft measure with 193 people living with dementia. This process led to the final 19-item ¾«¶«´«Ã½ Dementia Resilience Scale.
You can learn more about each stage in the following publications:
- (Windle et al., 2022)
- (Windle et al., 2023)
- (Roberts et al., 2023)
- (Roberts et al., 2025)
©¾«¶«´«Ã½ (2024). All rights reserved and no reproduction without permission.
¾«¶«´«Ã½ Dementia Resilience Scale © 2024 by ¾«¶«´«Ã½ is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
The BDRS is free to use and publicly available. It can be used without the need to obtain permission, subject to acknowledgement in publications.
If you wish to adapt or translate the measure, please contact dsdc@bangor.ac.uk to request permission.
We recommend printing on pale coloured paper. This is based on the suggestions of people living with dementia who have informed this work.