What Do Coping Questionnaires Measure Exactly?
Coping questionnaires aim to measure your coping strategies and ability to self-regulate in response to different experienced stressors.
Perhaps when we’re trying to understand what coping questionnaires measure, a good place to start is by understanding what we mean by ‘coping.’
According to Gurvich et al. (2021) coping is making use of mechanisms intended to reduce psychological stress. These mechanisms could be good or bad, some effective and some less so, as an example, consider emotional eating or smoking, versus seeking emotional support from friends or building resilience.
Individual behaviors relating to coping can be challenging to measure, as we respond differently to the same type of stressor, depending on several different factors including our character traits, specific environment, support networks, and individual life experiences.
How we cope as individuals may also change as we develop, and just because we respond to one scenario in one way, doesn’t mean we’ll react to it the same way if it happens again.
Coping questionnaires are helping us to understand our coping strategies at any given moment towards different situations in our lives. Coping strategies can be positive, for example, tapping into your social support network, or negative, such as turning to alcohol or drugs.
This situation-level focus of coping is what differentiates it and its scales from the more enduring psychological trait of resilience, measured using tools such as the popular Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale.
A Look at the Reliability and Validity
Most of the research on coping is divided into exploring two key areas: coping styles or coping strategies. While they seem similar, there is a core distinction between the two:
Coping Styles
Coping style refers to your disposition towards handling challenging situations or stressors. Endler and Parker (1990) suggested that there are three basic coping styles: task-oriented, emotion-oriented, and avoidance-oriented. Your coping style may stay consistent across different situations and experiences, and the coping strategies you use within this may change and adapt.
Research into coping styles has received a fair amount of criticism. The main criticism is that that in focusing only on coping styles, the variability and complexity of coping efforts overall are not captured effectively, and stifles predictive validity within the research (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984).
The researchers argue that a better evaluation and validity can be developed by focusing on coping strategies within specific contexts, rather than how someone copes with stress generally.
Coping Strategies
Studies that use coping scales or measurements focused on measuring coping strategies for specific situations or stressors have been found to be more valid and reliable (Daniels and Harris, 2005, Lazarus and Folkman, 1984).
Greenaway et al. (2015) conducted a review of 6 different coping measures. They found that overall, these types of measures tended to have higher validity, but some tests had poorer test-retest reliability than others (specifically The Ways of Coping Questionnaire).
One of the main criticisms for the validity and reliability of coping scales and measures for coping strategies is that they ask participants to recall stressful experiences or respond to hypothetical situations that fail to measure ‘in the moment’ coping responses (Porter and Stone, 1996, Steptoe, 1989).
Overall, researchers agree there is some weakness to these measurements; however, they can still be a great tool and resource. Greenaway et al. (2015) summarised that low to moderate inconsistencies with coping measures should not deter their use, but that researchers need to be rigorous in selecting the scales or questionnaires they use with their particular participant groups.
What our readers think
Hello, dear, I am using the brief cope 28-item scale for my research, but I am having difficulty in scoring. for example, it is obvious that each scale has 2 domains for example religion que#22 and 27 so how i can put the person may score sum of total which ranges from 2-8 to say the person uses religion cope what is the cut point?
Hi Fila,
Each subscale is scored by summing the responses.
There isn’t a universal cut-off point to determine whether a person “uses” a particular coping style. However, some researchers define higher scores (e.g., 6–8) as indicative of reliance on that coping mechanism. This interpretation often depends on the research context and population norms.
You might consider comparing scores to normative or percentile data if available for your sample or context. If none exists, setting a threshold, like scores ≥6, could align with common practice for identifying strong reliance on that coping style.
Let me know if you’d like further clarification!
Warm regards,
Julia | Community Manager
hello, I needed the access for the Brief COPE scale to use in my thesis.
Hi Wajeeha,
This scale is freely available to use and a copy of it with scoring information can be accessed here.
Hope this helps!
Warm regards,
Julia | Community Manager
Hi. I wanted to use the COPE inventory (60 items) scale. Just wanted to know if it is available for use freely?
Hi Priyanka,
This scale is freely available to use and a copy of it with scoring information can be accessed here.
Hope this helps!
Warm regards,
Julia | Community Manager