Purpose: The purpose of the population-based study in the paper is to report on progress in formulating instruments to measure children's resilience and associated protective factors in family, primary school and community contexts. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper a total of 2,794 students, 1,558 parents/caregivers, and 465 staff were surveyed in October 2003. A cross-sectional research method was used for the data collection. Three surveys (student survey, parent/caregiver survey, and staff survey) were developed and modified to measure student resilience and associated protective factors. Exploratory factor analysis with Oblimin rotation and confirmatory factor analysis were used to analyse the reliability and validity of the scales of the three surveys. Findings: The surveys in this paper find good construct validity and internal consistency for the social support scale of parent/caregiver survey, which had been modified from previous studies. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated a goodness of fit for the following scales student resilience scale of the student survey the school organisation and climate scale and family functioning scale of the parent/caregiver survey and the health-promoting school scale and social capital scale of the staff survey. Practical implications: The paper specifies aspects of the resilience concept within a holistic or socio-ecological setting. Measures of validity and reliability indicate that these instruments have the sensitivity to elucidate the complexity of both the resilience concept and the intricacy of working within the multi-layered world of the school environment. Originality/value: This paper provides health educators and researchers with reliable and valid resilience measures, which can be used as guidelines in implementing evaluation programmes for the health-promoting school project and the prevention of mental health problems in children. (Contains 9 tables.)