If you work in corporate learning, coaching, or HR, you have probably met the Nicholson McBride Resilience Questionnaire, quite possibly without knowing its name. It is the twelve-statement resilience quiz that circulates in leadership programmes, wellbeing workshops, and onboarding decks: free, five minutes, and finished with a score and a friendly paragraph of feedback. There is a reason it spread. It is approachable, it is instant, and it asks sensible questions about how a person handles pressure.
The question practitioners eventually ask is a different one, and it is usually phrased exactly as people type it into a search bar: is the NMRQ validated? The honest answer takes more than one word, and it decides what you can responsibly do with an NMRQ score. This guide gives that answer plainly: where the NMRQ comes from, how it is scored, what the evidence does and does not say, and where a validated instrument like the Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI) takes over when the job is development rather than a conversation starter.
Is the NMRQ validated? Not in the formal sense. The NMRQ has no original peer-reviewed development or validation study; it entered wide use through a bestselling 2010 trade book [1]. Independent academic studies that later used it report acceptable reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha between 0.76 and 0.80 [2, 3], but the instrument has not been through the factor analysis and norming that define a validated psychometric. It is a self-assessment: honest work for reflection, not built for consequence.
Table Of Contents:
- What the NMRQ is
- How the NMRQ is scored and read
- Is the NMRQ validated? The honest answer
- Where the PRI takes over
- Comparing the numbers
- Paul’s story: “Developing”
- The bottom line
- FAQ
- References
What the NMRQ is
The NMRQ comes from the UK business-psychology consultancy Nicholson McBride and was popularised in Resilience: Bounce Back from Whatever Life Throws at You [1], a bestselling trade book. The version in wide circulation, twelve positively worded statements such as “In a difficult spot, I turn at once to what can be done to put things right,” is presented in the book itself as an abbreviated self-assessment, designed to give readers a starting point for the book’s development advice. That origin matters. The NMRQ was never positioned as a clinical or research psychometric; it is a practitioner tool from a practitioner book, built for accessibility, and on that measure it succeeds.
How the NMRQ is scored and read
The mechanics: twelve statements, each self-scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), summed to a total between 12 and 60, higher meaning greater self-reported resilience. The published feedback bands [3]: up to 37, a developing level of resilience; 38 to 43, established; 44 to 48, strong; 49 to 60, exceptional.
What an NMRQ score licenses you to say: how a person rates their own everyday resilience against twelve sensible behavioural statements, banded into plain-language feedback. What it does not license: any comparison against a norm group (there is none; a norm group is the reference population that tells you whether a 35 is typical or alarming among working adults, and without one the number floats free), any claim about which part of resilience is strained (there is one total), or any read of current physiological state (all twelve items are positive self-descriptions with no time frame). A self-scored quiz with uniformly positive items also invites the well-documented tendency to agree with statements that sound like the person we would like to be, especially when the quiz is handed out at work.
Is the NMRQ validated? The honest answer
Here is the answer to the question that likely brought you to this page. The NMRQ has no original peer-reviewed development or validation study from its creators; it entered the world through a trade book, not a journal. That is not a scandal, it is a category: the NMRQ is a self-assessment, not a validated psychometric. At the same time, fairness requires the other half of the picture: independent academic studies that have used or adapted the NMRQ report acceptable internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha between 0.76 and 0.80 [2, 3], including a Greek adaptation study with 1,158 participants [2]. In other words: the instrument is reliable enough that researchers have been able to use it, but it has never gone through the development, factor-analysis, and norming work that defines a validated psychometric.
For a workshop icebreaker or a book’s self-reflection exercise, that is entirely sufficient. For a coaching engagement where a client’s development plan, or an organisation’s budget, hangs on the measurement, it is not. The rule of thumb is simple: the more consequence a score carries, the more evidence it owes you.
Where the PRI takes over
The Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI) is a validated psychometric instrument that measures state resilience across six domains (Health, Purpose, Cognition, Perseverance, Composure and Relationships) and twelve trainable drivers. It sits at the opposite end of the evidence spectrum: a validation study of 803 working professionals, Cronbach’s alpha of 0.94 overall and 0.76 to 0.85 by domain, normalised scoring against a stable population sample, and results that are never self-read but always debriefed by a certified practitioner. The full validation results are published in the PRI Technical Report [4] and summarised on our Evidence page.
The practical difference shows up in the first ten minutes of a debrief. An NMRQ total of 35 says “developing.” A PRI profile says where: perhaps Sleep has collapsed while Motivation is intact, or Emotional Agility is depleted while Creative Insight still works. One is a label; the other is a starting point. And because the PRI’s twelve drivers are trainable, re-measurement later shows whether the work worked, which a single self-scored total cannot do with any confidence.
Comparing the numbers
| Category | Nicholson McBride Resilience Questionnaire (NMRQ) | Personal Resilience Indicator (PRI) |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Popularised in Clarke & Nicholson’s 2010 book Resilience | Developed 2021, validation study of 803 working professionals |
| Development basis | Practitioner-designed; no original peer-reviewed validation study | Peer-review-standard validation, held privately; see the PRI Technical Report |
| Availability | Free; widely circulated as a self-assessment | Licensed (pay-per-use); certification training |
| Response time frame | None specified | Past 4 weeks |
| Item phrasing | All positively worded | Both positively and negatively worded |
| Response scale | 5-point (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) | 5-point Likert (1 = not at all like me, 5 = very much like me) |
| Number of items | 12 | 64 scored (80 presented) |
| Domains | 1 (single total) | 6 |
| Drivers / subdomains | None | 12 |
| Internal consistency | No original figure; independent studies report α = 0.76 to 0.80 | α = 0.94 |
| Scoring | Summed score, 12 to 60, four feedback bands | Overall, domain and driver scores |
| Normalisation | No | Yes (stable population sample) |
| Debrief | None; self-read feedback text | Always debriefed by a certified practitioner |
Paul’s story: “Developing”
Paul took the NMRQ in the same stretch of weeks he took every other instrument on this site: months into chronic pain, barely sleeping, cancelling clients he loved working with. His total came back 35. Developing.
I remember him reading the feedback paragraph out loud, in the tone he reserves for things that are technically true. Developing. A man with decades of hard-won coping behind him, a therapist by profession, four months into the worst spiral of his adult life, and the instrument’s entire verdict was a word you would use for a junior employee’s presentation skills. It was not wrong, exactly. His resilience, in that stretch, was very much not at its best. But the label carried no norm group, no breakdown, and no next step; it could not tell him whether 35 was cause for concern or a bad Tuesday, and it certainly could not tell him that the honest culprits were a torn rotator cuff, ruined sleep, and a nervous system stuck in fight mode.
The PRI, taken in the same period, said what “developing” could not: 13% overall, Health at 1%, Sleep at 4%, Emotional Agility at 2%, and, crucially, Creative Insight at 79%, the intact capacity he could rebuild from. One instrument gave him an adjective. The other gave him a map. When you are fine, the difference is academic. When you are not, it is everything.
The bottom line
The NMRQ is a good conversation starter and an honest self-reflection exercise, free, quick, and sensible, and it should be used as exactly that. The PRI is a validated measurement built for consequence: coaching engagements, development programmes, organisational decisions. The question that chooses between them is not “which is better?” but “what hangs on the answer?” If the answer is “a conversation,” the NMRQ will serve. If the answer is “a development plan,” measurement owes you evidence: explore the Personal Resilience Indicator, or find a certified practitioner.
FAQ
Is the NMRQ validated?
Not in the way the word usually means. The NMRQ has no original peer-reviewed development or validation study; it comes from a bestselling 2010 trade book, not a journal. Independent academic studies that later used it report acceptable reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.76 to 0.80), so it is not junk, but it has never been through the factor analysis and norming that define a validated psychometric. Rule of thumb: fine for reflection, not built for consequence.
How is the NMRQ scored?
Twelve statements, each self-rated 1 to 5, summed to a total between 12 and 60. The published bands: up to 37 developing, 38 to 43 established, 44 to 48 strong, 49 to 60 exceptional. The catch: there is no norm group behind the bands and no breakdown behind the total, so the score tells you how someone rates themselves, banded, and nothing about why.
What makes the PRI different from the NMRQ?
Category, not degree. The NMRQ is a free self-assessment; the PRI is a validated psychometric with a study of 803 working professionals behind it, an alpha of 0.94, normalised scores, six domains and twelve trainable drivers, and a mandatory practitioner debrief. One starts a conversation about resilience; the other measures it precisely enough to build a development plan on. For the full landscape across nine instruments, see our guide to resilience scales.
Can I use the NMRQ with coaching clients?
You can, for what it is: a warm-up, a reflection prompt, a way into the topic. What you cannot responsibly do is hang a development plan or a progress claim on it, because there is no norm group, no domain structure, and no validation behind the number. When the engagement gets serious, switch to an instrument that publishes its evidence.
References
[1] Clarke, J., & Nicholson, J. (2010). Resilience: Bounce back from whatever life throws at you. Crimson Publishing.
[2] Pilafas, G., Strongylaki, N. P., Papaioannou, D., Menti, D., & Lyrakos, G. (2020). Adaptation of “Nicholson McBride Resilience Questionnaire” (NMRQ) in Greek: A reliability and validity study in an epidemiological Greek sample. Health and Research Journal, 6(4).
[3] Rometsch, C., Mansueto, G., Ceccatelli, S., & Cosci, F. (2024). The moderating role of stigma in the relationship between depression and resilience: Results of a cross-sectional study in university students. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1392381. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1392381
[4] Sinclair, N., Hafner, G., & Sinclair, P. D. (2022). Personal Resilience Indicator: Validation summary and psychometric properties (PRI Technical Report). Mind Matters. Available on the Evidence page.
