Scale Development of Meaning-Focused Coping

Abstract

The objectives of the current study were to develop an inventory that measures meaning-focused coping and to explore its reliability and validity. In total, 668 middle school students who had experienced significant negative events were recruited. The Meaning-Focused Coping Questionnaire included 26 items within eight dimensions: Changes in Situational Beliefs, Changes in Global Beliefs, Changes in Goals, Meaning Making, Long-Term Prevention Strategies, Rational Use of Resources, Acceptance, and Heuristic Thinking. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the questionnaire had good construct validity. The results based on item response theory indicated that all of the item discrimination values were greater than 0.5.

KEYWORDS:

• classical test theory
• item response theory
• meaning-focused coping
• meaning-making
• validity

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this article was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Number 31070913). This research was also partly sponsored by the Jet Li One Foundation Project.

Notes

Note. The meaning-focused coping scored was the total score for acceptance and positive reframing. Subjects came from earthquake-stricken areas (N = 339).

^a “To what extent do you attempt to create or find meaning from the significant loss?”

**p < .01.

*p < .05; **p < .01.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yiqun Gan

Yiqun Gan is a professor at the Department of Psychology, Peking University, China. She received her PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1998. She has published over 60 research papers, 16 in internationally refereed journals (indexed by SSCI) as the first or corresponding author. Her research areas focus on coping, mental health, and job burnout.

Mingzhu Guo

Mingzhu Guo is a master's student in the Department of Psychology, Peking University.

Jing Tong

Jing Tong is a master's student in the Department of Psychology, Peking University.