Abstract: One of the most important methodological issues in the domain of resilience is how to identify resilient individuals. Although there have been many methods of screening resilient persons since its inchoation, the inquiry of resilience still faces technological difficulties in what to be followed or on which to be based. In this article the authors try to categorize the methods for identifying resilient individuals used in literature of resilience into five groups, namely simple qualitative technique, brief quantitative technique, age-based developmental task technique, converging technique and psychological scaling technique. For each kind of methods, the technical definition, operationalizing tenors and strength and weakness of function are clearly delineated. After briefly comparing all kinds of methods, the authors discussed the issue of trade-off between power and efficiency in identifying resilient individuals.

Key words: Resilient individuals, identify, assessment