Mental disengagement
I turn to work or other substitute activities to take
my mind off things.
I go to movies or watch TV, to think about it less.
I daydream about things other than this.
I sleep more than usual.
Alcohol /C0drug disengagement
I drink alcohol or take drugs, in order to think
about it less.Source : Carver, C.S., Scheier, M.F., & Weintraub, J.K.
(1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically
based approach. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology , 56, 267 /C0283.
Copyright r1989 by the American Psychological
Association. Reproduced with permission.
STATE COPING MEASURES
Coping Strategy Indicator (CSI)
(Amirkhan, 1990 ).
Variable
The CSI measures coping responses to a specific stressful event.
Description
Amirkhan (1990) constructed the CSI using a bottom-up method of taking items from previous research and
submitting them to a principal-factor analysis. The CSI is a situational measure of coping because it asks indivi-
duals to recall a problem that was important and caused them to worry. Individuals then indicate the extent to
which they used 33 coping strategies while dealing with the problem. The CSI consists of three subscales of 11
items each: problem-solving, seeking social support, and avoidance.
Sample
The CSI was developed by soliciting responses from 458 community members who were recruited at super-
markets, health clinics, and unemployment agencies. The psychometric properties were tested in a sample of 92
undergraduate student sample ( Amirkhan, 1990 ). Information about means and standard deviations was not
available from the original paper.
Reliability
Internal Consistency
Amirkhan (1990) reported Cronbach alpha coefficients of .93 for seeking support, .89 for problem solving, and
.84 for avoidance.
Test/C0Retest
Amirkhan (1990) also reported that test /C0retest reliability up to four and eight weeks later was .82 for a sample
of 92 community members and .81 among 87 undergraduate students.
Validity
Convergent/Concurrent
Amirkhan (1990) reported that the CSI correlated as expected with counterpart subscales from the WCQ
(Folkman & Lazarus, 1988 ) using revised scales by Vitaliano, Russo, Carr, Maiuro, and Becker (1985) . In particu-
lar, CSI problem solving correlated highly and positively with WCQ problem-focused coping ( r5.56), as did CSI
avoidance and WCQ avoidance ( r5.55), and did CSI social support and WCQ social support ( r5.46). Somewhat
surprisingly, WCQ social support was positively correlated more strongly with CSI problem solving ( r5.55)
than CSI seeking social support. This may have been due to the instrumental nature of the social support items
in the WCQ (e.g., ‘Talked to someone who could do things about the problem’).
Clark et al. (1995) found no correlation between the CSI seeking social support subscale and WCQ social sup-
port. The authors did report high correlations between other corresponding subscales (and null correlations338 12. MEASURES OF COPING FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING
III. EMOTION REGULATION