Self-report, situation-specific coping questionnaires: What are they measuring?

Abstract

Self-report, situation-specific assessments of coping, such as the Ways of Coping Scale (WOC), have been used frequently in recent years. Several potential issues in the development and use of these questionnaires have been identified, including the applicability of coping items to different kinds of stressful events, the definition of the period for which Ss report coping efforts, and the meaning of the "extent" response key that is used for reporting coping items. In this study, 91 college students completed the WOC and were then interviewed about their responses; interview questions were focused on the 3 issues stated above. The hypothesized concerns about the WOC were supported. Many of the coping items were not applicable to certain kinds of stressful events. Also, how the coping report period was defined varied across Ss and the way in which the extent response key was interpreted differed across both Ss and WOC items.

The customer is not always right: customer aggression and emotion regulation of service employees

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“…An important limitation of much research on coping and health has been the use of coping scales with a variety of psychometric problems. (For reviews, see Endler & Parker, 1990a, 1990bStone, Greenberg, Kennedy-Moore, & Newman, 1991. ) For example, the reliabilities for many of these scales are low; construct validity is either lacking, not presented, or poor; and few scales have been cross-validated.…”

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“…Los resultados de estos modelos muestran en principio que los afrontamientos de aproximación son más adaptativos, mientras que los afrontamientos evitativos no lo son (Blechman & Wills, 1992;Stone, Greenberg, Kennedy-Moore Newman, 1991). El supuesto implícito es que la mayor inversión de esfuerzo en el afrontamiento, conducirá a mejores resultados.…”