Validation of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-R) in rural contexts in South Africa

Introduction: Resilience is central to young children’s healthy and happy development. The Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-R) has been widely used in several countries. However, its construct validity among young children in rural South Africa has not been examined. We investigated the construct structure of the CYRM-R for foundation-phase learners (i.e., grades R/0-3) in rural primary schools in South Africa.

Methods: The CYRM-R was translated into the local language Setswana and tested on 1 088 learners attending 10 schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged rural communities in the North West province. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to validate the CYRM-R scale and examine its construct structure.

Results: Our findings suggested a two-factor (i.e., personal resilience, caregiver resilience) structure of the CYRM-R with some items removed or reclassified as preferable or relative to other examined solutions. CFA results showed that the optimal model represents a good fit to the data (RMSEA = 0.037, CFI = 0.929, TFI = 0.915), explaining 83.4% of the variance.

Conclusion: The Setswana version of the CYRM-R is a reliable and valid measure of resilience in young children in a rural South African context and can be used to assess resilience in young children in Setswana-speaking populations.