Academic resilience, academic buoyancy and the motivation and engagement scale : a construct validity approach

University students navigate a variety of adversities throughout their studies. Academic resilience and academic buoyancy reflect a student's ability to cope with major maladaptive adversity or low-level impeding adversity respectively. This study investigated whether academic resilience and academic buoyancy can be empirically differentiated using the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS) and Academic Buoyancy Scale (ABS) developed by Martin and Marsh (2006, 2008a). Construct validity was assessed for both scales, as well as the Motivation and Engagement Scale University-College (MES-UC) also developed by Martin (2009). The total sample comprised 761 university students (575 females, 186 males) who completed the ARS and ABS, a sub-sample of which (44; 26 females, 18 males) completed further scales including the MES-UC, Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991), Academic Resilience Scale 30 (ARS-30) (Cassidy, 2016) and revised Adult Attachment Scale (AAS-r) (Collins, 1996). Correlational analyses established a significant strong positive correlation between the ARS and ABS. The MES-UC was found to be a relatively appropriate measure of motivation and engagement constructs as evidenced by a significant moderate positive correlation with the MSLQ, and a weak positive correlation with the AAS-r. The ARS and ABS showed nonsignificant weak negative correlations with the AAS-r, but did not correlate with the ARS-30, suggesting they may be measuring constructs unrelated to academic resilience. Theoretically, these results call for Martin and Marsh's predictive model, factors and literature around academic resilience and academic buoyancy to be revised, and for the merit of research and assessments using their respective scales to be re-evaluated. Practically, a single global scale reflecting academic resilience and academic buoyancy as different levels of one construct may be beneficial for strategic interventions and assessments of students in the future.