Description

The Aboriginal Resilience and Recovery Questionnaire (ARRQ) was developed to assess resilience, healing, and recovery from trauma among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is a strengths-based measure that captures individual, relational, community, and cultural protective factors. The ARRQ was developed in collaboration with practitioners and clients of a Victorian Aboriginal community-controlled health service, using Indigenous research methodologies. The full ARRQ includes 60 items representing protective factors important to resilience and recovery, with items organized into subscales and single indicators.

The ARRQ-25 is a short form of the questionnaire developed for use in clinical and research settings where a shorter tool is needed. It maintains the core focus on resilience and recovery processes and has been validated as part of studies on wellbeing and quality of life among Aboriginal peoples.

AI/AN Communities where the measure has been used

Australia – Aboriginal populations

Demographics of AI/AN participants where the scale has been used

  • Victorian Aboriginal help-seeking adults engaged in counselling services in Australia
  • Older Aboriginal adults aged 45+ (majority women) living in Perth, Melbourne, and regional areas in Australia

Notes on adaptations or modifications

Short form version, ARRQ-25, was developed for use in research and aged-care contexts. ARRQ-25 is a 25-item measure instead of the original 60-item measure.

Modality and administration

Self-report; administered by Aboriginal research staff or in collaboration with Aboriginal health services and delivered in person, paper-and-pencil, or interviewer-assisted formats.

Scoring

Both versions of the ARRQ use Likert-type items. The full ARRQ-60 uses a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 5 = a lot) with responses summed to form subscale and overall scores. The ARRQ-25 uses a similar 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all true to 5 = very true), with total scores summed to reflect levels of resilience and recovery.

Psychometric evidence

Gee et al. (2023) conducted a preliminary psychometric analysis of the ARRQ-60, with Principal Components Analysis identifying two component subscales that demonstrated adequate internal consistency and convergent/discriminant validity. Findings showed moderate to strong positive associations with empowerment and negative associations with trauma symptom severity.

Gilchrist et al. (2023) validated the ARRQ-25 as part of a study on older Aboriginal Australians. The ARRQ-25 showed positive correlations with the Good Spirit, Good Life quality-of-life tool and ICECAP-O, and negative correlations with EQ-5D-5L, supporting concurrent and convergent validity.

Citation(s)

  • Gee, G., Hulbert, C., Kennedy, H., et al. (2023). Development of an Aboriginal Resilience and Recovery Questionnaire – a collaboration between practitioners and help-seeking clients of a Victorian Aboriginal community controlled health service. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 23:290. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-023-02091-4 [Original citation]
  • Gilchrist, L., Hyde, Z., Petersen, C., et al. (2023). Validation of the Good Spirit, Good Life quality-of-life tool for older Aboriginal Australians. Australasian Journal on Ageing, 42(2), 302–310. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajag.13128

Note: The included citations are not exhaustive, but represent the examples we had access to. If you are an original author or have other work that could be included here, please contact us.