Interaction of cognitive appraisals of stressful events and coping: Testing the goodness of fit hypothesis

Despite the importance that is attributed to coping as a factor in psychological and somatic health outcomes, little is known about actual coping processes, the variables that influence them, and their relation to the outcomes of the stressful encounters people experience in their day-to-day lives. This study uses an intraindividual analysis of the interrelations among primary appraisal (what was at stake in the encounter), secondary appraisal (coping options), eight forms of problem- and emotion-focused coping, and encounter outcomes in a sample of community-residing adults. Coping was strongly related to cognitive appraisal; the forms of coping that were used varied depending on what was at stake and the options for coping. Coping was also differentially related to satisfactory and unsatisfactory encounter outcomes. The findings clarify the functional relations among appraisal and coping variables and the outcomes of stressful encounters.

This study examined the psychometric properties of the "original" seven factored scales derived by Aldwin et al. from Folkman and Lazarus' Ways of Coping Checklist (WCCL) versus a revised set of scales. Four psychometric properties were examined including the reproducibility of the factor structure of the original scales, the internal consistency reliabilities and intercorrelations of the original and the revised scales, the construct and concurrent validity of the scales, and their relationships to demographic factors. These properties were studied on three distressed samples: 83 psychiatric outpatients, 62 spouses of patients with Alzheimer's disease, and 425 medical students. The revised scales were consistently shown to be more reliable and to share substantially less variance than the original scales across all samples. In terms of construct validity, depression was positively related to the revised Wishful Thinking Scale and negatively related to the revised Problem-Focused Scale consistently across samples. Anxiety was also related to these scales, and in addition, it was positively related to the Seeks Social Support Scale across samples. The Mixed Scale was the only original scale that was consistently related to depression and anxiety across the three samples. Evidence for concurrent validity was provided by the fact that medical students in group therapy had significantly higher original and revised scale scores than students not participating in such groups. Both sets of scales were shown to be generally free of demographic biases.