Assessing the Dimensional Structure of Coping: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Abstract

The Ways of Coping Questionnaire (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988) yields eight scales which purport to measure eight unique coping styles. Using Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) this study seeks to find the underlying dimensional structure of the Ways of Coping Questionnaire, using three samples: (1) Folkman and Lazarus' normative sample (1988, N = 150), (2) a Canadian normative sample (N = 385; Sinha, Willson, Madhukar, & Watson, unpublished manuscript), (3) an East Indian sample (N = 199; Sinha et al. , unpublished manuscript). Analysis yields one interpretable dimension which appears to be effective/ineffective coping strategies. To provide a more rigorous comparison, Spearman's rank-order correlations of the MDS solutions were examined, and confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the eight scales. Some cultural differences are noted between the Canadian normal sample and the Indian sample: although the effective/ineffective dimension is supported across cultures, rank-ordering of the MDS loadings of the eight scales shows that there is only a small correlation between the loadings of these two samples.