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Do Coping Styles Differ Across Sociocultural Groups? The Role of Measurement Equivalence in Making This Judgment
Author(s) -
Prelow Hazel M.,
Tein Jenn-Yun,
Roosa Mark W.,
Wood Jennifer
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1023/a:1005139318357
Subject(s) - sociocultural evolution , psychology , coping (psychology) , immigration , confirmatory factor analysis , social psychology , health psychology , equivalence (formal languages) , developmental psychology , structural equation modeling , clinical psychology , public health , sociology , medicine , geography , linguistics , statistics , philosophy , mathematics , nursing , archaeology , anthropology
Cross‐sociocultural group measurement equivalency is an important issue that generally has not been studied in the coping literature. Measurement equivalency of the COPE (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) was assessed across two sociocultural groups, a sample of 100 Anglo middle‐class divorced mothers and a sample of 122 low‐income Mexican American/Mexican immigrant mothers. A series of restrictive confirmatory factor analyses revealed that seven of the COPE's subscales may be measuring the same underlying construct across populations. However, scores derived from the subscales may not represent the same magnitude of the construct in these two groups. This study makes an important first step in furthering the understanding of coping strategies in low‐income Mexican American/Mexican immigrant mothers. This study also illustrates the importance of testing for measurement equivalency before conducting comparative research in disparate populations.