A Dispositional and Situational Assessment of Children's Coping: Testing Alternative Models of Coping

Abstract

Dispositional and situational measures of children's coping were developed using a theoretically based approach. Two studies (N1 = 217; N2 = 303) assessed the psychometric characteristics of these measures in fourth- through sixth-grade children. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a four-factor model of dispositional coping (active, distraction, avoidant, and support seeking) provided a better fit to the data than either the problem- versus emotion-focused (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) or passive versus active (Billings & Moos, 1981) coping models. The four-factor model was largely invariant with respect to age and gender. Moderate to high correlations were found between the parallel subscales of the dispositional and situational measures of coping. Although the four factor structures of the dispositional and situational measures were generally similar, factor loadings and correlations between dimensions were not equivalent.

Searching for the structure of coping: A review and critique of category systems for classifying ways of coping.

“…The intercorrelations among the four secondary factors ranged from .52 to .78. Ayers et al (1996) used a second sample to replicate this four-factor model and to examine its fit with data collected in reference not only to how children usually cope but also to how children actually coped with a specific salient stressful event. The How I Coped Under Pressure Scale (HICUPS) was administered, which contains parallel items written in the past tense (to refer to events that have already taken place).…”

“…It should be noted that as part of scale development efforts for the systems described in the Appendixes, item sets tapping each of the 13 categories have been tested separately in confirmatory analyses and found to be unidimensional and relatively homogeneous. For example, sets of items tapping problem solving have been examined in CFAs by several researchers (e.g., Ayers et al, 1996;. Table 5 can be used to analyze the convergence of category systems, starting from the more than 400 ways of coping listed in Table 3 to the 13 listed in Table 5.…”

“…Many other closely related ways of coping were also considered part of this family, such as planning, logical analysis, effort, persistence, and determination. For example, one of the empirical analyses found that Cognitive Decision Making (including Strategizing and Planning) loaded on the same higher order factor as Direct Problem Solving (Taking Instrumental Action; Ayers et al, 1996). The main controversy surrounding problem solving (discussed below) was whether it should be considered a higher order family in its own right or whether it should be combined with other ways of coping.…”

“…A common way of coping in response to the stresses of disease and disability, this family may be similar to other approach forms of coping like sensitization, monitoring, and vigilance (although these latter terms may imply some degree of fixation and rumination). A variation on information seeking, namely seeking understanding, appeared in one empirical system as part of the Active secondary factor marked by Problem Solving (Ayers et al, 1996).…”

“…6 Two other empirically validated systems explicitly tested the problem-versus emotionfocused distinction as higher order categories and found that it did not provide a good fit with the data (Ayers et al, 1996;ConnorSmith et al, 2000).…”