Background The recently developed social resistance framework addresses a widespread pattern whereby non-dominant minority groups, such as ethnic/racial minorities and people of low socioeconomic status, often engage in unhealthy and risky behaviours at higher rates compared with society at large. The framework suggests that power relations within society may encourage members of non-dominant minority groups to actively engage in acts of everyday resistance, which may include risky and unhealthy behaviours.

Methods The current paper develops and psychometrically evaluates a research tool to test this innovative framework. The UNREST questionnaire measures the key concepts of the framework, along with four high-risk and unhealthy behaviours, as well as demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. A pilot survey was conducted among representative subsamples of a non-dominant group (African–Americans) and a dominant group (Caucasians).

Results Consistent with the general premises of the framework, the evaluation of the questionnaire produced six valid and reliable scales, which were significantly correlated with some criterion-related items as well as unhealthy and risky behaviours.

Conclusions The preliminary results of our pilot study suggest that the new tool may be useful for testing the framework. The results also provide support for the framework in general.