Assessment of cognitive appraisal and coping linkages using two forms of canonical correlation.

As a conceptual framework for research on stress and coping, the transactional model of Lazarus and Folkman is process-oriented and requires methodologies that capture the process nature of cognitive appraisal and coping across stages of a transaction. Two forms of canonical correlation were used to analyze strength of association measures between pairs of cognitive appraisal and coping variable sets for 138 student subjects. Analysis indicated that, when an environmental transaction includes more than one time period, the generalized canonical correlation approach may offer some advantages in assessing linkage strength over the pairwise method.