A preliminary validation of the Brief COPE instrument for assessing coping strategies among people living with HIV in China

Abstract

BackgroundThe Brief COPE instrument has been utilized to conduct research on various populations, including people living with HIV (PLWH). However, the questionnaire constructs when applied to PLWH have not been subjected to thorough factor validation.MethodsA total of 258 PLWH were recruited from two provinces of China. They answered questions involving the scales of three instruments: the Brief COPE, the Perceived Social Support Scale, and the Perceived Discrimination Scale for PLWH. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were conducted.ResultsThe CFA found a poor goodness of fit to the data. The subsequent EFA identified six preliminary factors, forming subscales with Cronbach’s alphas, which ranged from 0.61 to 0.80. Significant correlation coefficients between the subscales and measures of perceived social support and perceived discrimination were reported, giving preliminary support to the validity of the new empirical factor structure.ConclusionThis study showed that the original factor structure of the Brief COPE instrument, when applied to PLWH in China, did not fit the data. Thus, the Brief COPE should be applied to various populations and cultures with caution. The new factor structure established by the EFA is only preliminary and requires further validation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40249-015-0074-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Psychometric properties of Brief-COPE inventory among nurses

“…which was similarly reported in previous validation studies including the original Brief-COPE study (Charles S. Carver, 1997;García et al, 2018;Monzani et al, 2015;Su et al, 2015). Nevertheless, the developer of Brief-COPE reported that the exibility of the inventory encourage researchers to apply and test on different settings and population to extensively either using all the subscales or selectively use relevant scales in their research (Charles S. Carver, 1997).…”

“…Yusoff et al (2009) investigation on Malay version of Brief-COPE among adolescent in Malaysia, produced a nine factor model explaining 71.2% of the total variance. Su et al (2015) generated a six factor model on the Chinese version of Brief-COPE, which explained 55.5% of total variance. Reich, Costa-Ball, & Remor (2016) constructed a four factor (24-items) model of the Uruguayan version, and more recently, Gloria & Peña (2018) produced an eight-factor (24-items) model on the Chilean version.…”

“…Following sound theoretical guidance, a number of health-relevant studies have provided empirical evidences by using statistical tools to extract underlying domains and test psychometric properties in various settings and populations such as caregivers of people with dementia in the United Kingdom (Cooper, Katona, & Livingston, 2008), among breast cancer chemotherapy patients in Malaysia (Yusoff, Low, & Yip, 2009), people with traumatic brain injury in New Zealand (Snell, Siegert, Hay-Smith, & Surgenor, 2011), people living with HIV in China (Su et al, 2015), person living with HIV/AIDS in India (Mohanraj et al, 2015), pregnant minority women in the United States (Ruiz et al, 2015), adults in Italy (Monzani et al, 2015), and community population in Chile (García, Barraza-Peña, Wlodarczyk, Alvear-Carrasco, & Reyes-Reyes, 2018). Brief-COPE is also translated in a number of languages such as French version (Muller & Spitz, 2003), Malay version (Yusoff et al, 2009), Brazilian-Portuguese version (Brasileiro et al, 2016), and Chilean version (García et al, 2018).…”

Gender disparities in depression severity and coping among people living with HIV/AIDS in Kolkata, India

“…The Brief COPE is a reliable and abbreviated version of the longer COPE inventory, which has been used to assess frequency of behaviors for coping with chronic illnesses [ 37 – 39 ]. For this study, the questions were framed to assess coping specifically with HIV and taking ART.…”

Validation of the Italian version of the Revised Prenatal Coping Inventory (NuPCI) and its correlations with Pregnancy-Specific Stress.

“…Moreover, other different measurement models have been proposed. Cooper and collaborators [31] identi ed three general coping styles (Problem-focused, Emotion-focused, and Dysfunctional coping) while Meyer [32] grouped the 14 original subscales in two styles: Adaptive and Maladaptive coping (see also: [33]). We have adopted this latter partition.…”