Although religiousness is tied to coping, little work examines the role of specific religious beliefs in the coping process. Applying the transactional model of coping, positivity of God image and vertical religious focus were assessed in a national sample of 103 parents of children with disabilities. Controlling for general religiousness, these specific beliefs were correlated with parents' appraisals. Positive God image was associated positively with appraisals that the disability is a challenge, a benefit, and God is in control; it was associated negatively with loss appraisal. Vertical religious focus was associated positively with the appraisal that God is in control. Consistent with the model, appraisals mediated the relation between specific beliefs and coping strategies. Loss appraisal mediated the relation of vertical focus and God image with engagement coping and the appraisal that God is in control further explained the relation between vertical focus and engagement coping.Religion powerfully influences how individuals cope with stress (Pargament, 1997). It explains unique variance in coping and predicts outcomes beyond secular coping (Pargament, 2002). Despite this wealth of research demonstrating that religion is linked with coping, much less is known about how religion enters and forms the coping process. This study addresses this question using a cognitive appraisal approach, providing a broader evaluation of religion's role in coping. We test how specific religious beliefs are related to appraisals of stressors, how these appraisals relate to coping, and how these beliefs fit into the whole coping process. Moreover, we explore the role that specific religious beliefs play beyond that of general religiousness. THE TRANSACTIONAL MODEL OF STRESS AND COPINGCognitive approaches to stress and coping assert that stressors are stressful only if an individual perceives them as such (Bandura, 1977;Roesch, Weiner, & Vaughn, 2002). Among the best-supported cognitive approaches is Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transactional model. It features cognitive appraisals of a stressor as mediators of the relations between individual difference variables and coping strategies used; these strategies then influence various outcomes.

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The social adjustment of 11 severely head injured patients was assessed using the KATZ adjustment scale. The result suggested that the group had poor social adjustment, and on many dimensions was similar to a psychiatric population. The head-injured patients also had social interaction difficulties as assessed by a range of observational and self-report measures. When compared to an out-patient and non-clinical group they had poor social performance, high social anxiety and low self-esteem. The implications of this for rehabilitation are discussed.

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Twenty-eight young adult out-patients with social interaction difficulties were assessed in an attempt to measure the three variables of social performance, social anxiety and self-esteem. A non-clinical comparison group comprising 32 subjects from a university subject panel were assessed on the same measures. There were significant differences in the patient and non-clinical group on anxiety and esteem, however, some patients scored well within the range of the non-clinical group and had adequate social performance. The patient group was characterized by high social anxiety which was more often related to low self-esteem than adequacy of social performance. We concluded that interaction difficulties are multiply determined and social performance, social anxiety and self-esteem are potentially independent variables. The implications of this for therapy were discussed.