How Religious Coping is Used Relative to Other Coping Strategies Depends on the Individual’s Level of Religiosity and Spirituality

Abstract

Results from empirical studies on the role of religiosity and spirituality in dealing with stress are frequently at odds, and the present study investigated whether level of religiosity and spirituality is related to the way in which religious coping is used relative to other coping strategies. A sample of 616 university undergraduate students completed the Brief COPE (Carver in Int J Behav Med 4:92-100, 1997) questionnaire and was classified into groups of participants with lower and higher levels of religiosity and spirituality, as measured by the WHOQOL-SRPB (WHOQOL-SRPB Group in Soc Sci Med 62:1486-1497, 2006) instrument. For participants with lower levels, religious coping tended to be associated with maladaptive or avoidant coping strategies, compared to participants with higher levels, where religious coping was more closely related to problem-focused coping, which was also supported by multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. The results of the present study thus illustrate that investigating the role of religious coping requires more complex approaches than attempting to assign it to one higher order factor, such as problem- or emotion-focused coping, and that the variability of findings reported by previous studies on the function of religious coping may partly be due to variability in religiosity and spirituality across samples.

Stress, Religious Coping and Wellbeing in Acculturating Muslims

“…This may account for the efficacious nature of religious coping found in this study (Krägeloh et al, 2012). Future research would need to explore a broader cross-section of the Muslim community in New Zealand, to determine the conditions under which religious coping is effective.…”

“…Research has identified a variety of ways that people use religion to cope, including engaging in religious practices, seeking social support through religious leaders and congregations, and reframing stressful events in reference to their relationship with God (Boudreaux, Catz, Ryan, Amaral-Melendez, & Brantley, 1995;Krägeloh, Chai, Shepherd, & Billington, 2012;Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998). While some researchers have focused more exclusively on the cognitive aspects of religious coping (Pargament et al, 1998), others have explored the importance of outward religious practices and social support accessed via religious networks (Boudreaux et al, 1995) with results suggesting that different facets of religious coping may differentially impact wellbeing outcomes.…”

A Systematic Review of Studies Using the Brief COPE: Religious Coping in Factor Analyses

“…David and Knight [91] reported acceptable fit indices when religious coping was grouped together with adaptive coping strategies (Table 4), while Knoll et al [95] and Moscardino et al [110] reported acceptable fit indices when turning to religion was in the same factor as instrumental and emotional support. A recent study by Krägeloh et al [125] conducted a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to compare alternative factor solutions for the Brief COPE [1], and found that, for participants with lower levels of religiosity and spirituality, the best model was when turning to religion was grouped with maladaptive coping strategies. For participants with higher levels of religiosity and spirituality, the best model was when religious coping was grouped with problem-focused strategies, followed by emotional coping strategies, and lastly by maladaptive strategies.…”

“…Secondly, the range in the target populations varied enormously across the reviewed studies. As Krägeloh et al [125] showed, this diversity may also be a contributing factor to the wide range of reports about the role of religious coping in relation to other coping mechanisms. Finally, to contain the already large scope of the present review, no analyses were shown how the outcomes from exploratory factor analyses differed for studies that used the situational and those that used the dispositional version of the questionnaire.…”

Dogmatism, coping, and spirituality : predicting mental health among the religious and the secular.

“…The results of Krägeloh, Pei Minn Chai, Shepherd, and Billington (2010) suggested that individuals with lower levels of spirituality and religiousness are more likely to use avoidant and escapist coping strategies that are typically maladaptive for one's mental health while higher levels of spirituality and religiousness were associated with positive indications of health. In this regard, accounting for levels of religiousness and spirituality may be important contextual determinants for dictating the relationship between religious and spiritual coping strategies and mental health.…”