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Resilience

Psychological resilience is measured here using the two-question Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-2^©) [19], a validated and widely-used tool for assessing resilience in the general population and in various healthcare settings [20]. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale was developed as a brief measure of ‘bounce-back’ and adaptability or how well one is equipped to cope with stressful events, tragedy, or trauma [19,21,22]. This perspective of resilience emphasises an adaptive process whereby people can build their capacity to overcome adversity [23]. The availability of material resources and emotional support from both family and community is considered important [20]. Resilience has also been described as an individual’s capacity to adjust to adversity, as distinct from the process of recovery (i.e., recovery being a gradual return to baseline following an isolated adverse event) [6,24-26]. 

Respondents to the Canterbury Wellbeing Survey were asked to respond to two items, or questions, that make up the CD-RISC-2^©. The first of these questions relates to the ability to adapt to change and the second to the ability to bounce back after illness or hardship. The CD-RISC 2^© is scored out of a total of 8, with 0 being the lowest level of resilience and 8 being the highest level of resilience. Note that for copyright reasons the CD-RISC-2^© questions and response breakdowns cannot be described in full.

This indicator presents the CD-RISC-2^© mean score for greater Christchurch respondents. The scale was included in the Canterbury Wellbeing Survey for the first time in 2020.

The figure shows that the mean resilience scores of greater Christchurch, Christchurch City, Selwyn District, and Waimakariri District residents, as measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, was 6.2, 6.2, 6.5, and 6.3 points, respectively, in 2020. None of the differences between scores are statistically significant. The CD-RISC-2^© has not been used in any other population-based surveys of adults in New Zealand, therefore there is no New Zealand comparator for this indicator. However, a representative, population-based survey of adults in the USA found a mean score of 6.91 (SD 1.5) [19,22]. Different cultural understandings of resilience may need to be taken into account when comparing resilience scores across countries and/or ethnic groups [21].