Construction of a Scale on Coping Repertoire during COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to develop a scale for measuring coping strategies used in the novel COVID-19 pandemic among the adult residents of Kolkata in India. An exploratory cross-sectional study was conducted, that included - conceptualization and generation of 36 items for 16 coping strategies with five-point response categories;relevance judgment (based on item validity index) & item validation (based on item-domain total correlation) of these items;and identification & validation of the factor structure. An online survey was conducted using snowball sampling technique during three weeks of April 2020. Complete sets could be obtained from 388 participants (200 males and 188 females). The S-CVI results (relevance of overall questionnaire) indicated high content validity (0.88) for all items of coping and significant positive item-domain total correlations were found in the process of item analysis. Based on scores of sixteen coping strategies, principal component analysis resulted in five factors as indicated by eigenvalues (1.34 to 3.32) and scree plot. These five common components were identified as positive emotion focused, escape oriented, depression developing, solution generating and self-soothing coping and a unique component- catastrophizing. This factor structure was validated through confirmatory factor analysis and same factor structure of the scale was found. Satisfactory internal consistencies of all components were found (0.61-0.89). The tool would be useful for understanding adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies used by people during a pandemic situation and it will also help in planning therapeutic intervention for combating the posttraumatic stress of this pandemic situation. Copyright © Behavioral Science Research Institute