Development and Validation of the Robust - Pandemic Coping Scale (R-PCS)

Abstract

The psychological consequences of epidemics/pandemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, include an increase in psychopathological symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, and stress, and negative emotions, such as fear. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how people cope with the pandemic. Coping is a multi-component process, helping to diminish the traumatic impact of stressful events in a variety of ways. We studied how university students coped with the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, by developing the Robust - Pandemic Coping Scale (R-PCS), a new scale for measuring coping strategies related to epidemics/pandemics. The scale is based on a classification of coping strategies referred to the needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. To create a robust scale, such that the item values would be independent of the sample used for developing it, we employed Rasch modeling. We used a sample of 2,987 Italian university students who participated in an online survey including the R-PCS and the Power to Live with Disasters Questionnaire (PLDQ), during March 2020. First, we applied a dual approach combining exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, which supported the goodness of a 4-factor model (i.e., Despair, Adjustment, Proactivity, and Aversion) for the R-PCS, invariant across gender and age of respondents (younger or as old as 23 years, older than 23 years). We then transformed the raw scores of the R-PCS into interval logit scale scores applying the Rasch model. Second, our findings supported the discriminant validity and the criterion validity of the R-PCS, examining the correlations with the PLDQ. They also confirmed its predictive validity: the R-PCS scores were related to 2-month-later enjoyment and anger, indicating that Adjustment and Proactivity were adaptive while Despair and Aversion were maladaptive. Third, our study revealed gender and age differences: the scores were higher for Despair, Adjustment, and Proactivity for females; for Aversion for males; and for Proactivity for students older than 23 years. The study suffers from limitations related to social desirability, gender imbalance, and self-selection effects in the recruitment.

Development and evaluation of psychoeducational resources for adult carers to emotionally support young people impacted by wars: A community case study

“… Zimmer-Gembeck and Skinner (2011) identified 12 families of strategies grouped into three categories ( Table 1 ), linked to Deci and Ryan’s (1985) three basic needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Each category includes two adaptive and two maladaptive families of coping strategies, that can be activated when people perceive an event as a challenge or threat (for family definitions and disaster-related applications see Burro et al, 2021 ; Raccanello et al, 2020 , 2021a , 2022b ). Adaptive strategies are, for competence: problem solving, information seeking; for relatedness: self-reliance, support seeking; for autonomy: accommodation, negotiation.…”

Italian validation of the situational Brief Cope Scale (I-Brief Cope)

“…Unlike other situation or stress-specific coping scales (such as the Pain Coping Questionnaire [ 49 ], the Interpersonal Stress coping scale [ 50 ], the Coping self-efficacy scale [ 15 ], the Pandemic Coping Scales [ 51 ], or the Humor Coping Scale [ 52 ]—just to mention a few),—the COPE [ 11 ] and the Ways of Coping Questionnaire [ 47 , 48 ] have been used to measure different coping strategies in heterogeneous stressful situations and contexts and with many different population samples (e.g., patients, disaster survivors, health care workers).…”

Extraversion in COVID-19 Coping

“…Coping strategies are thus a progression with respect to people's reaction to stress [13]. When an event is perceived as a challenge (or, for that matter, an opportunity [14]) the response is adaptive; when it is perceived as a threat, a maladaptive response is the result [15]. Coping with challenges might lead variously to problem solving and information seeking in using self-reliance and/or supportseeking in either being assertive or accepting limitations based on identified priorities [15].…”

“…When an event is perceived as a challenge (or, for that matter, an opportunity [14]) the response is adaptive; when it is perceived as a threat, a maladaptive response is the result [15]. Coping with challenges might lead variously to problem solving and information seeking in using self-reliance and/or supportseeking in either being assertive or accepting limitations based on identified priorities [15]. Coping with threats, on the other hand results in helplessness from feelings of being out of control and/or the need to escape, causing rumination, refusal to cooperate and social isolation resulting from a withdrawal from social interactions [15].…”

“…Coping with challenges might lead variously to problem solving and information seeking in using self-reliance and/or supportseeking in either being assertive or accepting limitations based on identified priorities [15]. Coping with threats, on the other hand results in helplessness from feelings of being out of control and/or the need to escape, causing rumination, refusal to cooperate and social isolation resulting from a withdrawal from social interactions [15]. Accordingly, whether an individual perceives an occurrence as a challenge (or even an opportunity) or a threat will define their coping as either adaptive or maladaptive and is important to whether extraversion as a personality trait will determine the type of coping as positive or negative.…”