The COPE is a 60-item measure comprising 15 subscales with 4 items each. The subscales are planning, active
coping, suppression of competing activities, restraint, use of instrumental support, use of emotional support, pos-
itive reinterpretation and growth, acceptance, religious coping, focusing on and venting emotions, denial, behav-
ioral disengagement, mental disengagement, substance use, and humor. Individuals are asked to indicate the
extent to which they use these coping strategies when encountering difficult or stressful events in their lives. Like
the CISS, a situational version of the COPE Inventory was developed by rewording the instructions so that parti-
cipants think about a particular event when answering the items. A brief 28-item version of the scale is also avail-
able ( Carver, 1997; Kapsou, Panayiotou, Kokkinos, & Demetriou, 2010 ).
Sample
The COPE Inventory was normed on 978 undergraduate students ( Carver et al., 1989 ). The means and stan-
dard deviations for the subscales are shown below. The brief COPE was assessed using a sample of 168 hurricane
victims ( Carver, 1997 ).
MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR THE COPE INVENTORY
MS D
1.Active coping 11.89 2.26
2.Planning 12.58 2.66
3.Suppression of competing activities 9.92 2.42
4.Restraint coping 10.28 2.53
5.Instrumental social support 11.50 2.88
6.Emotional social support 11.01 3.46
7.Positive reinterpretation 12.40 2.42
8.Acceptance 11.84 2.56
9.Turning to religion 8.82 4.10
10.Focus on and venting emotions 10.17 3.08
11.Denial 6.07 2.37
12.Behavioral disengagement 6.11 2.07
13.Mental disengagement 9.66 2.46
14.Alcohol disengagement 1.38 0.75
Note: Range of possible values is 4 /C016 (except for alcohol disengagement which ranges from 1 /C04). The humor
subscale is omitted because it was added in a later version of the instrument ( Carver et al., 1989 , p. 280).
Reliability
Internal Consistency
The dispositional COPE Inventory exhibited Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from .45 (Mental disengage-
ment) to .92 (Turning to religion) in the large sample of 978 undergraduates ( Carver et al., 1989 ).
Test/C0Retest
Test/C0retest reliability over 6- and 8-week intervals yielded correlations higher than .42 (mental disengagement;
Carver et al., 1989 ). Other researchers found acceptable test /C0retest reliability over four weeks (ranging from .60 to .82;
Fillion, Kovacs, Gagnon, & Endler, 2002 ) and one year (ranging from .58 to .72; Cooper, Katona, & Livingston, 2008 ).
Validity
Convergent/Concurrent
Based on their reasoning that the COPE measured stable individual differences in coping, Carver et al. (1989)
tested the associations between COPE subscales and personality traits that they hypothesized would covary. The335 TRAIT COPING MEASURES
III. EMOTION REGULATION