First Validation of the INSPIRE Resilience Scale: a New Screening Instrument to Improve Military Selection

In an European Defense Agency project, named Improving Military Selection: Psychological Resilience Screening (INSPIRE), a screening instrument to assess the psychological resilience potential of military candidates in selection is developed. This new screening instrument, the INSPIRE Resilience Scale (IRS), consists of two parts. The first part is a questionnaire based on existing scales from various personality and resilience-related questionnaires and extra self-made scales. The second part comprises an interview protocol with two behavioral anchored rating scales (BARS) to standardize the assessors’ judgments. This screening instrument also includes dashboards for both the psychologist as well as the candidate which provides various overviews of scoring. The first version of the IRS is tested at the Dutch, German and Belgian MoD as well as at the Dutch Police Academy with circa 1000 selection candidates. The internal consistency of the scales is investigated based on the total data sample. This should lead to a further selection of items and scales of both the questionnaire and the BARS for the interview. Additionally, research on concurrent validity is done by comparing the IRS with related measurement instruments used in selection such as personality questionnaires (e.g. NEO). Finally, differences between countries, functions and personal features are investigated in order to look for the usability of the IRS in a broader sense. The results of this first validation will lead to a revised version of the IRS that will be used in predictive validity research with performance measures during training and operational work.