Psychometric Features of the Academic Resilience Scale-Short Version (ARS-SV): A Bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling Study

Abstract

Academic resilience is the ability to achieve successful results in educational challenges. Since it accurately predicts academic achievement and retention in undergraduates, measuring it is essential. The study is aimed at developing a short version of the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS) as well as testing the bifactor model, posed in prior research as an alternative to first-order structures. Items were altered to become linguistically suitable for the target population and examined in terms of content. An exploratory factor analysis (300 undergraduates) retained 12 out of the 30 items—four per dimension—considering their content and metric features. Confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling analysis tested and compared different models in 805 undergraduates. As a result, the bifactor ESEM model including three independent dimensions and a global dimension was selected due to its better fit. The short scale enables a valid, reliable, and fast assessment of academic resilience in undergraduates.