Adaptation and validation of the Ukrainian dispositional ‘cope’ questionnaire
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Дата
2019
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Видавець
Університет імені Альфреда Нобеля
Анотація
Despite the long history of coping behavior research, the problem of finding effective inventories
for measuring coping strategies remains unresolved. One of the approaches to solve this problem is to
unify measurement scales employed in empirical studies of coping behavior in cross-cultural contexts.
The purpose of this study was adaptation and validation of ‘COPE’ dispositional questionnaire proposed
by C.S. Carver, M.F. Scheier, and J.K. Weintraub in 1989 on the Ukrainian population. Adaptation of
the questionnaire was carried out on Ukrainian students to unify the coping research, since most of
the previous studies of the ‘COPE’ psychometric properties were also conducted on university students
(Gordeeva et al., 2010; Litman, 2006). N = 109 Ukrainian university students took part in the study
(including N = 46 men, and N = 63 women; the average age of participants in the empirical study was
24.5 yrs.). Adaptation of the COPE dispositional questionnaire was conducted from October 2017 to
January 2018. The main limiting factors of this methodology, like of any self-report questionnaire, are
expected distortions associated with natural forgetfulness, selective reproduction and insufficient level
of reflexivity in some participants. Thus, the probability that under the conditions of reflection about
sufficiently hypothetical stressful situations, the response of the subjects may also be “hypothetical” is
quite high. In addition, each subject presents his or her own, qualitatively unique, stressful event, whose
perception varies significantly from person to person. We attempted to overcome this shortcoming in
this empirical study by examining the behavior of the subjects during the exams or immediately before
/ after the exams, that is, during or immediately after the natural conditions of academic stress. During
the first stage of the research, the cultural adaptation of the ‘COPE’ questionnaire was carried out in
accordance with the requirements of the International Testing Commission (ITC). During the second
stage, the reliability of the Ukrainian-language ‘COPE’ inventory was tested. The α-Cronbach (α = 0.715)
for the questionnaire in Ukrainian confirmed high internal correlations of the variables within the scale,
which indicated a sufficient reliability of the results obtained for the Ukrainian version of ‘COPE’. Given
that the ‘COPE’ questionnaire is theoretically constructed, whose factor solutions were not clearly
reproduced in any of the studies validating this instrument, this research did not expected to replicate
the original factor loadings. To achieve the goal of validating the factorial structure of the Ukrainian
version of the ‘COPE’ dispositional questionnaire, the principal components analysis with Varimax
rotation and Kaiser data normalization was employed in this work. Factor analysis of the Ukrainian
‘COPE’ questionnaire (presented in seven iterations) revealed a five-factor model, similar to the original
factor model of ‘COPE’ (76.166% of total dispersion). In the process of factor validation of the Ukrainian
version of the ‘COPE’ questionnaire, a psychological interpretation of the factors was conducted by
analyzing the content of the factor loadings. The received factor model displayed close similarities to
the original version of the ‘COPE’ questionnaire. Yet, the Religious Coping formed a separate factor that
correlated with the factorial structure of the Italian version of ‘COPE’ (Sica, Novara, Dorz, & Sanavio,
1997). Such a factor model explains 76.166% of the total variance, which is of a satisfactory value. Thus,
it is possible to confirm the successful validation of the factorial structure of the Ukrainian version
of ‘COPE’ dispositional questionnaire. To assess the construct validity of the ‘COPE’ questionnaire, a
correlation analysis with the ‘SACS’ inventory – ‘The Strategic Approach to Coping Scale’ (Hobfoll et al.,
1994) in adaptation by N.E. Vodopyanova and E.S. Starchenko (2001) – was conducted. A significant
number of coping scales of the Ukrainian version of the ‘COPE’ questionnaire have moderate- and strong
positive and moderate negative correlations with the ‘SACS’ coping scales. Thus, based on the analysis
of the data obtained in the process of adaptation and validation of the Ukrainian version of the ‘COPE’
dispositional questionnaire, a sufficiently high internal consistency and reliability of the inventory were
revealed. It is concluded that the factor validation study of the questionnaire, as well as the analysis of
its construct validity, was successfully carried out. It is therefore possible to state that the Ukrainian
version of the ‘COPE’ dispositional questionnaire can be used to measure coping behavior in Ukrainianspeaking subjects.
Опис
Ключові слова
‘COPE’ questionnaire; adaptation; coping strategy; factor structure; constructive validity