Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04183-8 Measuring ego‑resiliency in Barbados with the ER89‑revised version Michael H. Campbell 1  · Jill Gromer‑Thomas 2  · Donna‑Maria B. Maynard 3  · Maisha K. Emmanuel 1 Accepted: 14 December 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022 Ego-resiliency is a relatively stable personality trait char- acterized by the ability both to rebound from negative experiences and to adapt to demands of life, enhancing effective functioning in a broad range of life experiences (Block & Block, 1980). The ability to “equilibrate and reequilibrate” (Block & Kremen, 1996) is evident in individual responses to dynamic environmental stress- ors. Ego-resiliency affords the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity (Tugade et al., 2004) and pre- dicts positive mental health outcomes (Hu et al., 2015). In the Caribbean, climate threats make resiliency at the individual and community levels a central public health concern (Maas Cortés et al., 2020). The original 14-item ER89 (Block, 1989) is a meas- ure of ego resiliency for which theoretical and empiri- cal literature suggests two first-order factors: optimal regulation (OR) and openness to life experience (OL), as well as ego resiliency as a second-order construct. Using items from the original scale, Alessandri et al. (2007) revised the ER89 to improve the factor solution measuring OR and OL by eliminating four items with inadequate factor loadings. The resulting 10-item ver- sion of the scale (ER89-R) has demonstrated relatively consistent psychometric properties and partial measure- ment invariance in cross-cultural studies (Alessandri et al., 2012; Vecchio et al., 2019). However, there were some inconsistencies in association with mental health outcomes among countries, and the test developers have encouraged further research with diverse populations. Barbados is an English-speaking small island developing state with physical, economic, and social vulnerability to climate change (Cumberbatch et al., 2020; Pelling & Uitto, 2011). The ER89-R may be useful for research in Barbados and other English-speaking Caribbean nations with similar linguistic, historical, and cultural contexts, where validated measures are needed to assess trait resiliency as a component of the broader community and regional resiliency, particu- larly in the context of natural disasters (Rodriguez-Llanes et al., 2013). The current study examined psychometric properties of the ER89-R in Barbados and is the final out- put of a multi-component research effort establishing psy- chometric properties of several instruments in Barbados, in which the ER89 originally was included as a measure of concurrent validity. Method The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board with jurisdiction. Undergraduate students (n = 346) com- pleted the original ER89 scale, including the 10 items comprising the revised version. Paper-and-pencil survey packets administered during class included the ER89 and four additional measures: the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory- Trait Version (STAI-T; Spielberger, 1983), Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck et al., 1996), Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10; Cohen & Williamson, 1988), and Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (ZSRDS; Zung, 1965). Analy- ses were completed using SPSS Version 28 and Mplus 6. After initial data screening, we evaluated the internal con- sistency of the instrument and component subscales. Given the restrictive assumptions of alpha and following recom- mendations by Dunn et al. (2014), we additionally calculated omega coefficients to reduce risk of over or underestimation of reliability. We evaluated concurrent validity using corre- lations with other measures of adjustment. Finally, we con- ducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using maximum likelihood estimation and oblique rotation to examine the fit of the two-factor (OR and OL) model. * Michael H. Campbell michael.campbell@cavehill.uwi.edu 1 Faculty of Medical Sciences, The University of the West Indies—Cave Hill, E.R. Walrond Clinical Skills Complex, Jemmott’s Lane, Bridgetown, Barbados 2 College of Social Work, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA 3 School of Education, The University of the West Indies— Cave Hill, Bridgetown, Barbados