The assessments

Divorce recovery is usually described. We measure it. Two instruments sit behind everything Rebuilders teaches, publishes and claims.

The Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale

The FDAS is a 100-item self-report measure of adjustment following the end of a love relationship. Dr. Bruce Fisher developed it as doctoral research in 1976 and revised it in 1978. It remains, half a century later, among the very few instruments built specifically to measure divorce recovery rather than general distress.

That specificity is the point. A depression inventory will tell you a divorcing person is distressed. It will not tell you whether they are still mentally entangled with their former partner, whether their anger is moving, or whether they can trust anyone again. The FDAS measures those separately, because they recover at different rates and need different work.

What it measures

Overall adjustment is the sum, out of 500. Higher scores indicate better adjustment throughout.

How reliable it is

The FDAS has been tested independently of its author. A validation of the Persian version assessed 486 divorced adults, split almost evenly between men and women, and reported internal consistency of .93 for the full scale with split-half reliability of .89. Both sit comfortably above the conventional threshold of .70.

A figure of .985 for total internal consistency circulates widely in the literature. It traces to the instrument's own documentation rather than to independent testing, so we cite the independently obtained .93 instead.

Who maintains it

Rebuilders International administers the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale, having taken on responsibility for it in full from the organisation that previously maintained it. We host it, score it, and publish the norms it is scored against.

That carries an obligation. An instrument is only as good as the reference data behind it, so we publish our norms rather than treating them as proprietary, and we say plainly where the instrument is weaker. See the evidence for the full position.

The Divorce Recovery Scorecard

The DRS is a 30-item short form reporting across the four RIFT phases. We built it because the full FDAS asks a great deal of someone who has just arrived in crisis, and a hundred questions is a real barrier at the moment a person most needs orientation.

It trades depth for accessibility. The DRS tells a person which phase needs attention. The FDAS tells a clinician considerably more — including the gap between self-worth alone and self-worth around others, which the short form cannot separate.

How the scores become RIFT phases

Both instruments report in the same four phases, which is what allows a person to move between them without losing continuity.

Note that Relationships rests on a single FDAS subscale worth 40 of the 500 available points. It is the narrowest of the four readings and we treat it accordingly. Definitions of each phase are on definitions.

How scoring works

Results are reported two ways, because they answer different questions.

The distinction matters more than it sounds. Because scores cluster in the middle of the range, the number of points needed to climb ten percentile places varies enormously depending on where someone starts. Percentiles therefore cannot be averaged — doing so produces a figure corresponding to no real person.

Our practice is to compute every statistic in points, then convert the result to a percentile at the final step. A person's individual report shows both.

Retaking

The assessment is designed to be taken more than once. We describe it to clients as an emotional weather report: a reading of where someone is now, not a verdict on who they are. Taking it again after a period of work is how movement becomes visible — and, in our own outcome data, how we can show what a program produced rather than asserting it.

Safety

Both instruments include items that can indicate someone is in acute distress. Responses meeting that threshold trigger a direct response rather than an automated results email. Those items are never included in any published aggregate, in any form.

References

Fisher, B. (1978). Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale. Developed as doctoral research, 1976; revised 1978.

Asanjarani, F., et al. (2017). Examining the reliability and validity of the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale: the Persian version. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 59(2). doi:10.1080/10502556.2017.1402653

Asanjarani, F., Jazayeri, R., Fatehizade, M., Etemadi, O., & De Mol, J. (2018). The effectiveness of Fisher's rebuilding group intervention on divorce adjustment and general health of Iranian divorced women. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 59(2), 108–122. doi:10.1080/10502556.2017.1375334

About Rebuilders International

Rebuilders International trains mental health professionals and divorce coaches in the Rebuilding method, developed by Dr. Bruce Fisher over more than forty years. Individuals going through divorce can find programs, classes and a free self-assessment at rebuilders.net.