Development and Initial Validation of the Africultural Coping Systems Inventory

Abstract

This article describes the development and validation of the Africultural Coping Systems Inventory (ACSI). The ACSI is a 30-item measure of the culture-specific coping strategies used by African Americans in stressful situations and is grounded in an African-centered conceptual framework. Findings from a principal components factor analysis conducted with a sample of African American adults (N = 180) supported a four-factor model as best representing the culture-specific coping behaviors of the group. A content review of the factors suggested the following dimensions of coping behaviors: cognitive/emotional debriefing, spiritual-centered coping, collective coping, and ritual-centered coping. Using a separate sample of African Americans (N = 220), the ACSI was subjected to a confirmatory factor analytic procedure to establish whether the four-dimension model of coping adequately fit the data. This procedure indicated that the four-factor oblique model was the best fit. The ACSI also demonstrated adequate internal consistency and concurrent validity. The authors discuss limitations of the study and implications for future research.

Coping Strategies as Moderators of the Relation Between Individual Race-Related Stress and Mental Health Symptoms for African American Women

“…Coles and Constantine (2006) explored the degree to which individual, cultural, and institutional race-related stress predicted the use of culture-specific coping efforts among a sample of African American adults. The authors used the Africultural Coping Systems Inventory (ACSI; Utsey, Adams, et al, 2000), which is a measure designed to assess the use of culture-specific strategies for persons of African descent. Their main analyses were conducted separately by gender.…”

Womanist Preservation: An Analysis of Black Women ’s Spiritual Coping

“…Some fairly recent studies utilize the conventional Coping Orientations to Problems Experienced scale (COPE; Greer & Chwalisz, 2007;West, Donovan, & Roemer, 2010), or the Coping Strategies Inventory (Bynum & Brody, 2005). Graham However, as an alternative, the 30-item Africultural Coping Systems Inventory (Utsey, Adams, & Bolden, 2000) is a culture-specific instrument validated by and with African Americans that cites limitations with conventional measurements. Although the shift to this culturally specific tool is not unanimous, numerous subsequent research studies focusing on culturally relevant issues such as the coping styles of: Black adolescents (Constantine, Donnelly, & Myers, 2002), male and female adults (Utsey, Bolden, Lanier, & Williams, 2007a), female college students (Greer, 2011;Robinson-Wood, 2009), as well as the initial development of the Racism-Related Coping Scales (Forsyth & Carter, 2014) employ the ACSI.…”

“…The intention of the ACSI measurement is to capture, through a cultural context, positive coping strategies used by African Americans as a response to daily stressors (Utsey et al, 2000.). The four themes of this measure include: (a) cognitive/emotional debriefing, (b) collective coping, (c) spiritual-centered coping, and (d) ritual-centered coping.…”

A culturally-sensitive model of the development of child anxiety.

“…Among the various culture-specific specific strategies for managing adversity, spiritual coping is defined as the use of beliefs about God or a higher power when confronted with adversity (Utsey, Adams, & Bolden, 2000).…”

“…For example, the extent to which one identifies with the African American context has been shown to significantly predict the use of culturally-based practices, such as collective coping, spiritual coping, and racial socialization (Constantine et al, 2002;Utsey, Adams, & Bolden, 2000;Zaff, Blount, Phillips, & Cohen, 2002). As children begin to explore the meaning of their ethnicity, they attempt to gather information about their own cultural background, in turn eliciting parental use of cultural socialization practices, such as discussions about attitudes and values and modeling the use of culturally-specific coping strategies (Hughes & Johnson, 2001).…”