Patterns of Coping in Black Working Women

Abstract

This study examined the replicability of the factor patterns of the Lazarus Revised Ways of Coping Scale on a sample of 191 black working women aged 22 to 64 years (M = 37.8, SD = 10.8) in a community in the southeastern United States. The majority of the women worked as clerks and service workers in one agency. The scale was administered individually and the items analyzed using alpha and confirmatory principal components analysis with oblique rotation. Two of the 8 scales derived by Lazarus's group, seeking social support and positive reappraisal, emerged as significant in the current analysis.

Index Terms:

• black women
• coping strategies
• stress