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military, metrics may not be performing as well as theorized, exist a strong foundation upon which studying the effect of
in part because of conscious or unconscious social desirability career occupational exposures may be shown to affect short­
and/or self­serving biases that result in inflated scores. This and long­term resilience among SOF combat Servicemembers.
leaves military resilience research, which has generally used
the CD­RISC, 8,19 in search of a better metric. A compounding stressor to that of SOF combat service is mild
traumatic brain injury (mTBI), which occurs at a relatively high
The ER89, in contrast, has relatively low face validity (i.e., in prevalence in active Servicemembers compared with the civil­
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which a scale’s items look like the construct they measure). It ian population. Veterans reported lower trait resilience with a
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has been argued that having high face validity may not nec­ higher prevalence of mTBI history, indicating that sustaining
essarily inherently indicate optimal measurement, especially more of these injuries may also impair resilience. For that rea­
when the construct is one that the respondent may or may not son, controlling for mTBI history should highlight the effects
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wish to possess. This is particularly pertinent for resilience be­ of SOF service. Although mid­career SOF combat Servicemem­
cause the capacity to adapt well to stress is integrally necessary bers have had longer SOF careers, this is not a clear indication
for success in the military. The ER89 has also demonstrated of total military service (e.g., some Servicemembers may join
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high content validity—scale items representing the span of the SOF later in their military careers), and it is important to con­
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underlying construct —with not only mental health outcomes, trol for it in the present study to ensure that differences in SOF
but also adaptive biological stress responses that align with career stage are preliminary evidence of SOF service effects.
the definition of resilience. 12,20 Specifically, individuals with
higher ER89 scores recovered faster from visual and physio­ Based on the lack of measurement consensus and SOF resilience
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logical stressors. Further, ER89 scores have been moderate, description, the present study had two aims: (1) to psychomet­
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on average, across SOF combat Servicemembers. With this, rically assess three resilience metrics in active SOF combat Ser­
the ER89 may be a more optimal resilience metric for mili­ vicemembers via central tendency and dispersion, reliability,
tary populations, but no study has investigated these resilience and content validity, and (2) to differentiate resilience between
metrics concurrently. Therefore, our first aim was to psycho­ SOF career stages in combat Servicemembers while accounting
metrically assess the ER89, CD­RISC, and RSES head­to­head for total military service and mTBI history. We hypothesized
in SOF combat Servicemembers. that all metrics would demonstrate acceptable internal con­
sistency but that the RSES and CD­RISC would show ceiling
As mentioned, the ER89, CD­RISC, and RSES were generally effects. We also hypothesized that the metrics would relate
designed to measure dispositional resilience, which most foun­ negatively to mental illness symptoms and positively to sub­
dational research in this area considered it to be. With this un­ jective well­being. We further hypothesized that SOF career
derstanding, resilience is conceptualized as a set of adaptive start combat Servicemembers would endorse higher resilience
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traits that an individual tends to display across contexts. In than their mid­career colleagues who have been through more
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line with stress theory, researchers have since combined intra­ specialized military stress exposure. Finally, we predicted that
personal and environmental factors to best conceptualize resil­ the ER89 and CD­RISC would be sufficiently sensitive to de­
ience as a dynamic coping process that involves state and trait tect differences in resilience between SOF career stages, even
factors. State factors are transient and based on the momentary when controlling for mTBI and total military service.
context, including factors such as one’s available resources.
Trait factors are generally stable across contexts and include
a person’s protective personality traits. 5,18 State and trait fac­ Methods
tors combine when coping with a stressor, and their interac­ Participants
tion results in various behavioral and affective responses. Active SOF combat Servicemembers (age, 33.1 ± 4.5 years;
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This process is iterative—influenced by past experiences—and, all males) were assigned to the United States Special Oper­
therefore, individual resilience should be measured as trajecto­ ations Command (USSOCOM). These combat Servicemem­
ries over time. There is potential growth in learning from past bers are affiliated with either the United Stated Army Special
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experiences, known as posttraumatic growth, but there are Operations Command (USASOC) or the Air Force Special
also factors that can lead to decreased resilience. Operations Command (AFSOC). Fifty­eight SOF combat Ser­
vicemembers completed the psychometric battery, either when
In the military context, with continual exposure to stress (i.e., entering SOF (career start; n = 38) or after multiple years with
training, deployment, injury), the consistent resource depletion their SOF organization (mid­career; n = 20). Thirty­seven com­
may accumulate into actual resilience decrements. Following bat Servicemembers were in the USASOC (63.8%; n = 17 SOF
stressor exposure, resilience may be impaired if the individual career start; n = 20 SOF mid­career) and 21 in the AFSOC
does not have time to process information or recover following (36.2%; n = 21 SOF career start). Thirty­three SOF com­
adaptation, which may lead to decay in one’s resilience. This bat Servicemembers reported no lifetime clinician­confirmed
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agrees with more recent resilience research, which argues that mTBI history (56.9%); those with a mTBI history reported
an individual cannot respond resiliently when their resources one to six mTBIs. There was no difference in mTBI history
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are depleted, making them vulnerable to stressors. This vul­ between career stages (χ (1) = 0.03; p = .59). The SOF career
nerability can occur when the system is impaired and especially start combat Servicemembers tended to be 6.5 years (SE = 0.9)
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when the adversity is prolonged. Indeed, SOF medical research­ younger than mid­career combat Servicemembers, which was
ers acknowledge that “[e]ven the most resilient—those who can statistically different (t = -7.07; p < .01). For this reason, age
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withstand the most hardship for the longest periods—have a was controlled for in preliminary analyses. On average, SOF
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breaking point.” Therefore, combat Servicemembers’ resil­ combat Servicemembers have spent approximately 12.6 years
ience could decay from years of SOF service involving continu­ in active military service. The SOF career start combat Service­
ally stressful combat and combat­related training. In the absence members served an average of 10.3 years (range, 5.8 to 27.7
of multiyear longitudinal data in this population, there does not years) and mid­career, an average of 16.9 years (range, 9.6 to
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