The Mismeasure of Coping by Checklist

Abstract

Hundreds of studies have now used standardized checklists to assess respondents' self-reports of coping with naturally occurring stress. This article presents a critical review of the conceptual and methodological issues involved in the use of these checklists. As they are currently employed, conventional checklists render an incomplete and distorted portrait of coping. Specifically, these checklists are grounded in too narrow a conception of coping; the application and interpretation of checklists in the typical study are not faithful to a transactional model of stress and coping; statistical controls cannot eliminate the effects of key person and situation variables on coping; and no consistent interpretation can be assigned to coping scale scores. Researchers are encouraged to consider a broader range of methods for assessing coping, including semistructured interviews, customized checklists tailored to their specific hypotheses and objectives, daily diaries, and traditional trait measures.

The perfectionism model of binge eating: Tests of an integrative model.

“…Removing variance shared with SOP or with neuroticism may thus result in a form of SPP that is unlikely to be observed in real life. As Coyne and Gottlieb (1996) asserted, using statistical controls, such as SOP or neuroticism, may create variables of questionable meaning. For these reasons, tables and figures do not show results for which SOP or neuroticism is included as a covariate.…”

A review of successful aging models: Proposing proactive coping as an important additional strategy

“…Self-report measures frequently include prepared response items that more often assess attitudes and dispositional acting styles instead of behavior that may change over time and may depend on the situation. Other problems include the fact that individuals are not able to report their efforts correctly (Schwartz, Neale, Marco, Shiffman, & Stone, 1999) and tend to employ socially desirable answering (Coyne & Gottlieb, 1996). It might therefore be productive for future research to consider developing new measures.…”

Relations between personality and coping: A meta-analysis.

“…Further, these distinctions have been critiqued both for failing to include the full range of coping strategies (e.g., the primary/secondary control distinction ignores disengagement) and for combining disparate strategies into overly broad dimensions (Compas et al, 2001;Coyne & Gottlieb, 1996;Skinner et al, 2003). For example, measures of emotion-focused coping combine strategies as diverse as relaxation, seeking support, wishful thinking, and avoidance, and they include negative emotional expression items (e.g., crying, worrying, breaking things) that are confounded with distress and psychopathology (Coyne & Gottlieb, 1996;Stanton, Danoff-Burg, Cameron, & Ellis, 1994). Although emotion-focused measures assessing unregulated emotional reactivity predict poor outcomes, measures assessing strategies for appropriately expressing and modulating emotions predict good outcomes, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between types of emotion-focused coping (Compas et al, 2001;Stanton et al, 1994).…”