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Coping and catastrophizing in chronic pain: A psychometric analysis and comparison of two measures 1
Author(s) -
Stewart Malcolm W.,
Harvey Shane T.,
Evans Ian M.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.10227
Subject(s) - coping (psychology) , psychology , clinical psychology , construct validity , chronic pain , internal consistency , psychometrics , pain catastrophizing , cognition , psychiatry
Abstract We analyzed and compared the psychometric properties of two measures of strategies for coping with pain: The Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ) and the Cognitive Coping Strategies Inventory (CCSI). The CSQ and CCSI were repeatedly administered to 30 chronic pain patients. Several subscales of both measures showed inadequate internal consistency, and test‐retest (one week interval) reliability lower than 0.7. For each inventory, moderate to strong intercorrelations between several subscales were observed. The Catastrophizing subscale was the only subscale for which there was clear evidence of construct validity. Results indicated that both measures showed similar psychometric difficulties, and question the construct validity of subscales other than Catastrophizing. Catastrophizing, however, more closely reflects appraisal processes than a coping strategy per se. We suggest that measures that use more parsimonious and empirically derived coping strategy subscales and that also assess appraisal factors would assist in advancing our understanding of coping with chronic pain. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol.