The Bangor Dementia Resilience Scale (BDRS): A questionnaire to measure resilience for people living with dementia
The Bangor 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: Bangor University, 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.
Development of the BDRS
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 Bangor Dementia Resilience Scale.
You can learn more about each stage in the following publications:
- A systematic review and psychometric evaluation of resilience measurement scales for people living with dementia and their carers https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36402942/
- 'I have never bounced back': resilience and living with dementia https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13607863.2023.2196248
- Development of an item pool for a patient reported outcome measure of resilience for people living with dementia https://jpro.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41687-023-00638-z
- The Bangor Dementia Resilience Scale: An outcome measure of resilience for people living with dementia
The Bangor Dementia Resilience Scale
Please fill in this short form to access the Bangor Dementia Resilience Scale (free of charge).
©Bangor University (2024). All rights reserved and no reproduction without permission.
Bangor Dementia Resilience Scale © 2024 by Bangor University 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.
Top tips from the Caban group for maintaining resilience
Contact
DSDC Research Centre
Tel: +441248 383050
Email: dsdc@bangor.ac.uk
Funding
This work was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research Grant/Award Number: ES/S010467/1, funded as ‘The impact of multicomponent support groups for those living with rare dementias’. Lead investigator S. Crutch (University College London (UCL)); Co-investigators J. Stott, P. Camic (UCL); G. Windle, R. Tudor-Edwards, Z. Hoare (Bangor University); M.P. Sullivan (Nipissing University); R. Mackee-Jackson (National Brain Appeal).
ESRC is part of UK Research and Innovation. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the ESRC, UKRI, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.