Coping Assessment Research Paper

1. What Is Assessed By Coping Assessment?

Coping with stress as an adaptive response refers to demands appraised as exceeding or taxing the subject’s resources (Monat and Lazarus 1991). These demands can consist of microevents such as daily hassles, critical life events, i.e., divorce or loss of a loved person, and chronic strain such as work stress. The responses, termed ‘coping with stress,’ include different psycho-logical processes and activities: attention processes such as vigilance or cognitive avoidance with respect to threatening stimuli; appraisal of the stress agent (stressor) concerning its significance for one’s well-being; cognitive activities altering the meaning of stressful encounters and actions influencing the stress-loaded person–environment relationship.

Several coping responses classifications circulate in research and applications. The most influential distinction emphasizes two fundamental categories: the problem-focused and the emotion-focused coping responses (Lazarus and Launier 1978). Some re-searchers add a third category: the ‘appraisal-focused coping.’

The types of questions which coping assessment should answer concern two major goals: (a) reliable and valid methods for observing, recording, and describing relevant features of coping processes; and (b) methods allowing the estimation of the probability of particular appraisal or coping modalities characterizing individual subjects (interindividual differences). These probabilities may or may not depend on situation specific conditions.

Coping research, developed over the last decades, uses different strategies for accessing psychological characteristics of coping tendencies and processes. The methods differ according to (a) the information sources, (b) the types of measures, (c) the developmental stage of the subjects, and (d) the diagnostic techniques.

2. Data Sources

The first data source that can be distinguished is self-report. Typical, and especially retrospective self-report data, mirror the subjects’ cognitive representation of their stress experience and coping behavior, and not how they really behaved. The assessment takes place outside the stressful situation, and memory plays a primordial role.

A second source is direct systematic self-observation inside the current stressful situation. This observation focuses on cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes involved in concrete stress and coping episodes from daily life or experimentally arranged situations. The third data source is assessing coping behavior by systematic external recording of psychological features by trained observers. Such methods have been commonly used in the laboratory, for coping at the industrial workplace, and also applied to the family and school context. A fourth potential data source is the direct recording of psychophysiological and bio-chemical parameters.

3. Measurement Type In Relation To The Stressful Situation

A central aspect that differentiates the gamut of assessment procedures concerns the question: how does the method assess coping with respect to the stressful situation?

Some methods measure coping tendencies using hypothetical situations that describe potentially stressful scenarios. Participants are asked to imagine how they would probably act in well-described hypothetical situations. These procedures presuppose that the person is able to report reliably and validly his or her probable responses to hypothetical stressful situations. The ‘Mainz Coping Inventory’ (ABI) of Krohne (1993) measures separately ‘vigilance’ and ‘cognitive avoidance’ with respect to ego-threatening and physical-threatening hypothetical situations. ABI contains, for both situation types, four hypothetical scenarios that are followed by ten binary scale items describing possible coping actions. The reliability scores are satisfactory. Miller’s Behavioral Style Scale (MBSS; Miller 1987) also measures, on the base of two hypothetical physical and two ego-threat situations, the coping modalities ‘monitoring’ and ‘blunting’ that are close to the vigilance–avoidance concept.

Other questionnaires focus on coping with more complex stressful domains (including chronic strain), for example the family (Buehler 1990), workplace (Semmer et al. 1996), or critical life events. Such assessments try to answer how people cope with a rather complex and temporally enduring situation, for example an illness or a difficult transition in family development (e.g., the birth of the first child). Most instruments use self-report measures and some self-observation or external observation (Semmer et al. 1996). For example, the Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales (F-COPES) from McCubbin et al. (1987) were created to assess problem-solving and behavioral strategies of families in problematic situations. Thirty coping items focus on features of intra and extrafamilial coping activities. Parent and adolescent norms have been elaborated on the basis of large samples for the five subscales and the total scale. Various assessment approaches refer the assessed coping to real experienced stressful situations in the recent past or to actual ongoing stress encounters. The Ways of Coping Questionnaire ( WCQ), the successor of the Ways of Coping Checklist ( WCC) from Folkman and Lazarus (1988) can be considered as a variant of such measures. WCQ contains eight sub-scales measuring coping strategies such as ‘Confronting Coping,’ ‘Positive Reappraisal,’ or ‘Seeking Social Support.’ Participants have to respond to 50 items on a four-point Likert scale on how they coped with a recently experienced stressful situation.

Approaches to assessing ongoing daily coping, record coping activities by daily checklists, or by the experience sampling method (ESM). Here participants record, using a time sampling schedule, at least six times a day for several days, their emotional states, coping activities, and other relevant information.

A fourth group of instruments does not specify the type of stressful situation. These situation-unspecific methods ask with what coping modalities participants respond if they encounter a stressful or upsetting situation. For measuring situation-unspecific coping tendencies, Endler and Parker (1990) devised the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS), which focus on ‘task-oriented,’ ‘emotion-oriented,’ and ‘avoidance-oriented’ coping in stressful situations. Coping tendencies, for stressful situations in general, are also measured by the questionnaire Stressver-arbeitungsfragebogen (SVF) from Janke et al. (1997), which assess 20 different types of coping modalities. Both procedures inform on stable interindividual differences and have good psychometric qualities.

The last group of situations, to which coping assessment has been related, are laboratory situations with real (or video-recorded) stressors. The laboratory setting is destined for research purposes. The validations of some questionnaires has profited from such laboratory assessments (e.g., Miller1987).

4. Coping Assessment Across Life Span

The type of technical procedure, item format, and content in questionnaires depends not only on the theoretical background and the type of stressors studied, but also on the age of the population which is the focus of the instrument. If it is evident that the same technical procedures can not be applied for illiterate preschool children as for adults, it is less clear, and indeed controversial in the literature, if the quality of coping modes changes across life span, or if at some life phases different frequencies predominate as a function of development-specific needs.

For preschool children, the only means available of assessing coping behavior are systematic observation of the overt behavior in the natural family setting or care institutions, and the use of rating scales by parents who evaluate the coping behavior of their children. Fabes and Eisenberg (1992) describe the modalities to observe systematically the coping behavior of 3.5-to 6-year-old children in anger-eliciting situations at full-day care institutions with categories such as ‘active resistance attempts,’ ‘adult-seeking attempts,’ ‘revenge-attempts,’ and others. The Coping Inventory of Zeitlin (1985) assesses measures for self-or environment-oriented coping tendencies by 3 to 15 year old children and adolescents with respect to the features ‘productivity,’ ‘activity,’ and ‘flexibility.’ ‘Coping with Self’ concerns the behaviors a child uses to meet personal needs, and ‘Coping with Environment’ the behaviors to adapt to the demands of the world. Zeitlin considers these properties as relevant for adaptive behavior independent from situation and age. Parents and teachers serve as data sources. An adapted version can be used as self-rating by adolescents and adults.

Most instruments were devised for adults. For the elderly, only few instruments have been developed and evaluated. One of them is the questionnaire of Brandtstadter and Renner (1990) to assess preferences for assimilative and accommodative modes of coping. Assimilation and accommodation processes are supposed to be of first importance to reduce the discrepancy between aspirations and achievements, which are progressively imbalanced in later adulthood. The two statistically independent 15-item scales assess the disposition for tenacious goal pursuit (TGP-scale) and for flexible goal adjustment (FGA-scale). The psychometric qualities of the scales are satisfactory. The above-described instruments illustrate the de-pendency of the measures (with respect to their content and their technical format) on theoretical assumptions and the developmental stage of the subjects chosen.

5. Technical Procedures

Most assessment procedures work on the base of self-report questionnaires. For an overview see Schwarzer and Schwarzer (1996). They mainly assess coping features and tendencies using multi-item scales. By measuring a coping modality using a set of items loading on the same coping factor, the reliability of the measure is improved. For constructing such scales, classical psychometric methodology offers a rich range of procedures and parameters, such as reliability, validity, and measurement quality evaluation.

Only a few methods observe appraisal and coping behavior within the situation by systematic self-observation. One example is the Family Self-Monitoring-System (FASEM-C), which runs on a palmtop computer. FASEM-C records information on current emotional and somatic states, on antecedents of (stress-) emotions such as the setting, events and appraisal, individual and social adaptive, or maladaptive coping responses (what subjects actually did), and on their short-term effects. All family members (or couples) have to record simultaneously, prompted by an acoustic signal based on a time sampling schedule, six times a day for a weekly period, their own experience and behavior, and the coping behavior of other family members present. Coefficients for reliability, reactivity, and validity are satisfactory (Perrez et al. 2000).

6. What Questions Can Be Answered By Coping Assessment?

The types of questions coping assessment can answer depend on the accuracy with which it can observe the underlying psychological phenomena. Most present assessment methods have focused on the cognitive representation that participants have of their appraisal and coping tendencies with respect to specific situations or to stressful situations in general.

Questionnaires with normative data from reference populations allows reliable information on inter-individual differences, e.g., CISS or SVF; others permit information on within-subject descriptions of appraisal and coping modalities (intraindividual measures), sometimes with respect to one single episode (e.g., WCQ). Questionnaires specially for intra and inter-individual measures have been developed for different age groups (Aldwin 1994).

A third type of information concerns process-related measures: process measures assess features of the appraisal-coping processes that can be observed in concrete processes.

The development of such instruments is still in its infancy. The Stress and Coping Process Questionnaire (SCPQ) models the perception appraisal-stress emotion and coping sequence, starting with a hypothetical stressful situation that the participant has to imagine (Reicherts and Perrez 1993). The subject gives relevant scaled information about his of her probable cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. Then the situation is presented with an evolved second and third stage asking similar in-formation. The questionnaire, with satisfactory psychometric qualities, allows the computing of scores on individual differences for process-relevant features. It has the disadvantage of being somewhat time-consuming for the participants. Alternative approaches to access process-relevant features are computer aided self-monitoring procedures.

7. Perspectives On Future Research

As far as the theoretical frameworks deal more with cognitive and behavioral processes and activities than with their subjective representation, it can be expected that the future development will give more emphasis to information on within-situation recorded cognitive activities, emotions, and behaviors rather than on information depending on post-situation reports and the participant’s own cognitive representation. The actual method-theory discrepancy is due to parsimonious reasons that have been in favor of representation-oriented questionnaires. Modern miniaturized computer technology now opens rich possibilities, including the concurrent assessment of psychological and physiological measures under real-life conditions (Fahrenberg 1996), but also the simultaneous recording of appraisal and coping behavior of dyads and small groups such as the family. One interesting development, which goes beyond the pure assessment function, is the development of ambulatory expert systems. These systems can aid the user in improving his or her coping behavior.

Bibliography:

1. Aldwin C M 1994 Stress, Coping, and Development. Guilford, New York
2. Brandtstadter J, Renner G 1990 Tenacious goal pursuit and flexible goal adjustment: Explication and age-related analysis of assimilative and accommodative strategies of coping. Psychology and Aging 5: 58–67
3. Buehler C 1990 Adjustment. In: Touliatos J, Perlmutter B F, Straus M A (eds.) Handbook of Family Measurement Techniques. Sage, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 393–574
4. Cartwright S, Cooper C L, Murphy L R 1995 Diagnosis a healthy organization: A proactive approach to stress in the workplace. In: Murphy L R, Hurrell J (eds.) Job Stress Interventions: Current Practice and Future Directions. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp. 217–33
5. Endler N S, Parker J D A 1990 Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS): Manual. Multi Health Systems, Toronto, Canada
6. Fabes R A, Eisenberg N 1992 Young children’s coping with interpersonal anger. Child Development 63: 116–28
7. Fahrenberg J 1996 Concurrent assessment of blood pressure, physical activity, and emotional state in natural settings. In: Fahrenberg J, Myrtek M (eds.) Ambulatory Assessment. Hogrefe and Huber, Seattle, WA, pp. 165–87
8. Folkman S, Lazarus R S 1988 Manual for the Ways of Coping Questionnaire. Consulting Psychologist Press, Palo Alto, CA
9. Janke W, Erdmann G, Ising M (eds.) 1997 Stress erarbeitungs-fragebogen (SVF 120) [Coping with stress questionnaire]. Hogrefe, Gottingen, Germany
10. Krohne H W 1993 Vigilance and cognitive avoidance as concepts in coping research. In: Krohne H W (ed.) Attention and A oidance: Strategies in Coping with A versi veness. Hogrefe and Huber, Seattle, WA, pp. 19–50
11. Lazarus R S, Speisman J C, Mordkoff A M, Davison L A 1962 A laboratory study of psychological stress produced by a motion picture film. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied 76 (34, Whole No. 553)
12. Lazarus R S, Launier R 1978 Stress-related transactions between person and environment. In: Pervin L A, Lewis M (eds.) Perspective in Interactional Psychology. Plenum, New York, pp. 287–327
13. McCubbin H I, Olson D H, Larsen A S 1987 F-COPS. Family Crises Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales. In: McCubbin H I, Thompson A I (eds.) Family Assessment Inventories for Research and Practice. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, pp. 194–207
14. Miller S M 1987 Monitoring and blunting: Validation of a questionnaire to assess styles of information seeking under threat. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52(2): 345–53
15. Monat A, Lazarus R S 1991 Stress and coping—Some current issues and controversies. In: Monat A, Lazarus R S (eds.) Stress and Coping. An Anthology. Columbia University Press, New York, 3rd edn, pp. 1–15
16. Perrez M, Schobi D, Wilhelm P 2000 How to assess social regulation of stress and emotions in daily family life? A computer assisted family self-monitoring-system (FASEM-C). Journal of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy 4: 326–39
17. Reicherts M, Perrez M 1993 Fragebogen zum Umgang mit Belastungen im Verlauf (UBV). Hans Huber, Bern (English translation in Perrez M, Reicherts M 1992 Stress, coping, and Health. Hogrefe and Huber, Seattle, WA)
18. Schwarzer R, Schwarzer C 1996 A critical survey of coping instruments. Coping and defense: A historical overview. In: Zeidner M, Endler N S (eds.) Handbook of Coping. Wiley, New York, pp. 107–32
19. Semmer N, Zapf D, Greif S 1996 ‘Shared job strain.’ A new approach for assessing the validity of job stress measurements. Journal of Occupational and/organizational Psychology 69: 293–310
20. Zeitlin S 1985 Coping Inventory: A Measure of Adaptive Behavior. Scholastic Testing Service, Bensenville, IL