Resource mobilization under forced migration: development and preliminary internal validation of the Displacement Resource Mobilization Scale (DRMS-16)

Resilience in forcibly displaced populations is usually assessed with dispositional instruments developed in general populations, which index recovery from adversity but not the relational and institutional resources shaping mental health after displacement, although post-migration difficulties predict distress at least as strongly as trauma exposure. No resilience instrument validated in displaced adults models navigation of services and rights as a dimension in its own right. A theory-derived 36-item pool was reduced to 16 items in a three-round modified Delphi review (eight experts) and verified in cognitive interviews with 12 displaced adults. After a pilot ( N = 107), 583 Turkish-literate Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi adults recruited by snowball sampling in Istanbul and Ankara completed the scale face-to-face; 141 provided a two-week retest. The sample was split into calibration and internal holdout subsamples and analysed by ordinal exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory graph analysis, invariance testing, item response theory and network psychometrics. Two methods recovered three factors: individual adaptive capacity, support seeking and relational resource use, and service and rights navigation. The correlated three-factor model fitted acceptably in the internal holdout subsample (CFI = 0.952; RMSEA = 0.064); bifactor diagnostics did not support a total score (explained common variance = 0.496; hierarchical omega = 0.694). Ordinal alpha was 0.816 to 0.859 by factor, and two-week factor-score stability was 0.578 to 0.647, below the conventional 0.70. No violation of scalar invariance was detected in the five grouping variables that could be tested. All three factors correlated positively with dispositional resilience and self-efficacy, most strongly for adaptive capacity; correlations with perceived stress and depressive symptoms are reported descriptively, because those two measures were almost uncorrelated. Cross-sectionally, longer residence and better Turkish comprehension were associated with higher navigation scores. The Turkish DRMS-16 shows preliminary evidence of internal consistency, an internally cross-validated structure and group comparability in this non-representative sample of Turkish-literate displaced adults. Its distinctive contribution is the navigation dimension, which general resilience measures do not capture. It is currently suited to research use, mainly group-level description; item revision, external replication, cross-language validation and evidence on responsiveness are still required.