Abstract:The Brief RCOPE is a 14-item measure of religious coping with major life stressors. As the most commonly used measure of religious coping in the literature, it has helped contribute to the growth of knowledge about the roles religion serves in the process of dealing with crisis, trauma, and transition. This paper reports on the development of the Brief RCOPE and its psychometric status. The scale developed out of Pargament's (1997) program of theory and research on religious coping. The items themselves were generated through interviews with people experiencing major life stressors. Two overarching forms of religious coping, positive and negative, were articulated through factor analysis of the full RCOPE. Positive religious coping methods reflect a secure relationship with a transcendent force, a sense of spiritual connectedness with others, and a benevolent world view. Negative religious coping methods reflect underlying spiritual tensions and struggles within oneself, with others, and with the divine. Empirical studies document the internal consistency of the positive and negative subscales of the Brief RCOPE. Moreover, empirical studies provide support for the construct validity, predictive validity, and incremental validity of the subscales. The Negative Religious Coping subscale, in particular, has emerged as a robust predictor of health-related outcomes. Initial evidence suggests that the Brief RCOPE may be useful as an evaluative tool that is sensitive to the effects of psychological interventions. In short, the Brief RCOPE has demonstrated its utility as an instrument for research and practice in the psychology of religion and spirituality.

Prayer is commonplace at times of illness. But what do people pray for? After reviewing recent work in the cognitive science of religion, the authors argue that pray-ers preferentially ask for psychological as opposed to physical outcomes because these are easier to accommodate God's intervention in the healing process. The authors exemplify this argument with recent studies of illness-related prayer. The findings from this study accord with other studies which demonstrate that those who follow spiritual pathways engage in efforts to conserve their understanding of and their relationship with the sacred. Thus, the authors argue that prayers to God are designed to enhance human health and well-being in ways that conserve the sacred. Unanswered prayers in a health-related context then may elicit spiritual struggles and significant distress to patients. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of unanswered prayer and theodicy for psychotherapy, emphasizing the seminal work of Anna-Maria Rizzuto.

Compares the self-reports of family members waiting during the cardiac artery grafting surgery of a loved one and explores whether they make distinctions between the contributions of nonreligious and religious support. Results from regression analyses suggests that the use of religious sources of support was associated with both more positive religious and nonreligious psychosocial adjustment scores after the influences of nonreligious support were statistically removed. Notes that among the 13 religious support activities identified, family members reported using prayer most frequently. Concludes that using religious support sources to cope with this surgically related stress is associated with distinct subjective benefits beyond those contributed by nonreligious sources.

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Non-adherence to antiretroviral medication is associated with adverse patient outcomes. Considerable research and clinical work has focused on issues surrounding patient compliance to prescribed regimens. Few studies have explored the essence of antiretroviral medications in the lives of women of colour with HIV. A qualitative study of HIV-infected women of colour was undertaken in response to the question: What is the role of antiretroviral medication in your life? Taped interviews were conducted with graduate psychology students and commercially transcribed. Transcriptions were analyzed by Spiegelberg's category-cluster-theme process by four different reviewers. Three themes were distilled: trust/mistrust, approach/avoidance motivation and 'constantly tethered'. Strategies designed to increase medication adherence may need to consider these basic themes in order to be successful.