BACO Resilience Assessment

BACO is an objective, faking-resistant personality test for measuring various forms of resilience.

Application
The subtests of the Resilience Assessment Test together comprise an objective test battery for measuring aspects of resilience.

Theoretical background
BACO is an objective test sensu R.B. Cattell that assesses the success of an individual's strategies for dealing with potential stressors. It measures the extent to which an individual is able to withstand stress – i.e. the degree to which his resilience, performance and mental state remain unaffected in a stressful situation.

Administration
The first subtest "Time pressure" measures resilience under pressure of time. The respondent is required to work a coding task for which the time allowed becomes progressively shorter. The second subtest "Presence of others" measures resilience in the presence of other people. Stylized faces are shown on-screen as the respondent performs calculations. The third subtest "Conflict of tasks" measures resilience in situations in which different tasks make simultaneous demands on the respondent's attention: a main and a secondary task are to be worked in a simulated office environment. The fourth subtest "Hindrance to planned action" measures resilience in the context of unexpected changes. The task involves finding one's way through a changing maze. The fifth subtest, "Inadequate feedback", measures resilience when negative feedback is given in a simulated job application situation. The sixth subtest, "Unfavorable working conditions", uses a simulated office situation to measure resilience to unfavourable working conditions.

Test forms
There is one test form.

Scoring
Forty test variables are calculated, of which 26 are normed. The test variables that are calculated describe the individual's test performance and provide information on the aspects of resilience measured in BACO.

Reliability
Split-half reliabilities between 0.34 and 0.91 were obtained for the variables of the individual subtests.

Validity
Many of the test variables have content validity that arises from the test concept. With regard to correspondence validity, Kieweg (2004) found that the resilience measured by BACO could not in principle be measured by self-assessment methods.
 
Also available are the results of studies of psychophysiological effectiveness, factorial validity and prognostic validity in alcohol patients, together with the findings of a resilience diary study.

Norms
Norms are available for a sample of N=511. For individual subtests norms are also available for university of applied science students (N=187) and social workers (N=190).