Coping and emotion regulation: A conceptual and measurement scoping review.

Abstract

The fields of coping and emotion regulation have mostly evolved separately over decades, although considerable overlap exists. Despite increasing efforts to unite them from a conceptual standpoint, it remains unclear whether conceptual similarities translate into their measurement. The main objective of this review was to summarize and compare self-reported measures of coping and emotion regulation strategies. The secondary objective was to examine whether other psychological measures (e.g., resilience) indirectly reflect regulatory strategies' effectiveness, thus representing additionally informative approaches. Results indicated substantial overlap between coping and emotion regulation measures. In both frameworks, two to eight individual strategies were usually captured, but only a third included ≤20 items. The most commonly evaluated strategies were reappraisal/reinterpretation, active coping/problem solving, acceptance, avoidance, and suppression. Evidence also suggested psychological distress and well-being measures, especially in certain contexts like natural stress experiments, and resilience measures are possible indirect assessments of these regulatory strategies' effectiveness. These results are interpreted in the light of a broader, integrative affect regulation framework, and a conceptual model connecting coping, emotion regulation, resilience, psychological well-being, and psychological distress is introduced. We further discussed the importance of alignment between individuals, contexts, and strategies used and provided directions for future research. Altogether, coping and emotion regulation measures meaningfully overlap. Joint consideration of both frameworks in future research would widen the repertoire of available measures and orient their selection based on other aspects like length or strategies covered, rather than the framework only. Public Significance StatementBoth coping and emotion regulation fields study how individuals adapt to emotional and stressful experiences but have evolved separately for several decades. Following recent scientific efforts to highlight their conceptual similarities, this review summarizes and compares self-reported scales used to measure these two constructs. Results show that coping and emotion regulation measures meaningfully overlap, encouraging their joint consideration to broaden the repertoire of tools available to better understand how individuals adjust to minor and major life events.