ERIC EJ1127195: Adapting the Brief COPE for Chinese Adolescents with Visual Impairments

2017·0.08 MB·English

by  ERIC

Adapting the Brief COPE
for Chinese Adolescents
with Visual Impairments
Wei Yuan, Li-fang Zhang, and Bing Li
Structured abstract: Introduction: The present research pioneered the effort in
assessing adolescents’ coping with visual impairment through adapting the Brief
COPE in an eastern context. The first study preliminarily explored the applicability
oftheBriefCOPEtoChineseadolescentstudentswithvisualimpairments.Basedon
theresults,theBriefCOPEwasmodifiedandrenamed,COPE-Revised.Thesecond
studytestedtheinternalpsychometricpropertiesandthecriterion-relatedvalidityof
theCOPE-Revised.Criterion-relatedvaliditywasobtainedthroughinvestigatingthe
correlation between coping and self-esteem. Method: The first study involved 176
adolescent students with visual impairments, comprising a survey using the Brief
COPE and follow-up interviews. In the second study, another cohort of 170 ado-
lescent students with visual impairments responded to the COPE-Revised together
with an inventory assessing self-esteem. Results: The COPE-Revised showed ade-
quate psychometric properties. Three higher-order factors, namely self-directed,
other-directed, and relinquished-control coping, were identified. The way in which
self-esteemwascorrelatedwiththesethreedimensionsofcopingprovidedevidence
for the criterion-related validity of the COPE-Revised. Discussion: The findings
indicate that the COPE-Revised has sound psychometric properties among adoles-
cents with visual impairments. Limitations regarding the sample-selection bias and
the means of questionnaire survey among visually impaired adolescents are noted.
Implications for practitioners: This research tailored a coping inventory for educa-
tors, counselors, and researchers who are interested in investigating adolescents’
abilitytocopewithvisualimpairments.Therelationshipbetweencopingwithvisual
impairment and self-esteem found in this research has reference significance for
educational and counseling services for visually impaired adolescents.
T
he present research applied and modi- personal future (Lifshitz, Hen, & Weisse,
fied a coping measurement tool, the Brief 2007). Adolescents with visual impair-
COPE (Carver, 1997), among Chinese ments tend to face typical developmental
adolescents with visual impairments. Ad- milestones during this life stage and, at
olescence is a developmental period of the same time, experience extra strains
personal and social identity, serving as a associated with their disability (Huurre
preparationforprofessional,familial,and & Aro, 1998). Moreover, research has
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JournalofVisualImpairment&Blindness,January-February2017 ©2017AFB,AllRightsReserved
indicated that visual impairment might (Miyazaki, Bodenhorn, Zalaquett, &
lead to a feeling of inferiority (Beaty, Ng, 2008) and clinical (Snell, Siegert,
1991) and, for adolescent students, place Hay-Smith, & Surgenor, 2011) samples.
thematahigherriskofmentalhealthprob- Carver (1997) shortened the Coping Ori-
lemsthantheirsightedpeers(Deng,Zhu,& entation to Problems Experienced inven-
Cao, 2012; Huang, 2004). This trend has tory (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub,
become more noticeable in mainland 1989) to the Brief COPE for simplicity.
China, where the population of students The Brief COPE also stands out because
withvisualimpairmentsisreportedtohave it is intended to assess the core aspects of
increased dramatically in recent years, ac- coping as summarized by Skinner and
cording to the national statistical data re- colleagues (2003). There are 14 two-item
leased by the Ministry of Education of the subscales in the Brief COPE, measuring
People’s Republic of China (2012). This 14 coping strategies: active coping, posi-
increase is attributed to a series of Chinese tivereframing,planning,useofemotional
governmental measures intended to pro- support, use of instrumental support,
motespecialeducationand,thus,theenroll- venting, self-distraction, acceptance, self-
mentinschoolsofchildrenwithdisabilities blame,behavioraldisengagement,humor,
has increased (Dong & Yu, 2015). denial, religion, and substance use.
Coping is generally considered “the Results of past studies have shown
most potent of predictors” (Livneh, 2001, that the Brief COPE is a psychometrically
p. 153) of psychosocial adaptation to sound measurement with certain limita-
chronic illness and disabilities. The con- tions.Thegreatmajorityofthescaleshave
struct of coping has been frequently internalconsistencycoefficientshigherthan
studied in terms of its crucial role in ad- .60,theminimumrequirementforascaleto
justment to adverse life experiences beconsideredreliable(Nunnally,1978),but
(Chronister, Johnson, & Lin, 2009). Re- somescaleshavedemonstratedlowinternal
sults of such research might have pro- consistency in a number of studies (Doron
vided an important perspective or basis etal.,2014;Kapsou,Panayiotou,Kokkinos,
for interventions and counseling services &Demetriou,2010;Snelletal.,2011;Yu-
to the population concerned. On the issue soff,2011).Resultantfactornumbersofthe
of adolescents’ coping strategies for Brief COPE from different studies varied
stress caused by visual impairment, how- from two (David & Knight, 2008) to 12
ever, very few investigations have been (Perczek,Carver,Price,&Pozo-Kaderman,
made. To the authors’ best knowledge, 2000).Twobroadfactorshavebeenrepeat-
there is not an existing inventory specif- edly identified: one is the so-called “posi-
icallyconstructedtomeasurecopingwith tive coping factor” (Miyazaki et al., 2008),
stress caused by visual impairment. which usually includes three subscales:
Of numerous existing coping measure- active coping, planning, and positive-
ments, the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997) reframing (Carver, 1997; Miyazaki et al.,
might be a good candidate for use with 2008; Snell et al., 2011); the other is the
individuals with vision impairments, socialsupport–seekingfactorinvolvinguse
given its widespread application to mul- ofemotionalsupportanduseofinstrumen-
tiple settings, including both typical tal support (Carver, 1997; Kapsou et al.,
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©2017AFB,AllRightsReserved JournalofVisualImpairment&Blindness,January-February2017
2010; Perczek et al., 2000; Yusoff, 2011). The first study
The remaining subscales have been quite The first study aimed at preliminarily ex-
unstableintheirfactor-loadingdistributions ploring and, if necessary, modifying the
across studies. In addition, some subscales applicability of the Brief COPE to visu-
were scattered in different factors, such as ally impaired Chinese adolescent stu-
acceptance (Carver, 1997; Miyazaki et al., dents. It was hypothesized that the Brief
2008); self-distraction and venting (Mi- COPE would show psychometric charac-
yazakietal.,2008);andpositive-reframing teristics similar to those shown in the
scales (Snell et al., 2011). literature. Given the limitations of the
In their study on psychological adapta- BriefCOPEidentifiedinpreviousstudies,
tion to visual impairment, Bergeron and we anticipated that modifications might
Wanet-Defalque (2013) utilized the Brief be needed for the sake of quality.
COPE to assess adults’ coping with ac-
quiredvisualimpairments.However,they PARTICIPANTSANDPROCEDURE
merelyreportedtheinternalconsistencies
A total of 176 participants (grades 7–12)
of two out of the 14 subscales; that is,
were recruited from three schools for vi-
denial ((cid:2) (cid:2) .54) and acceptance ((cid:2) (cid:2) sually impaired students in China. The
.57).Itisnecessarytofurtherexaminethe responses of 168 students (117 male, 50
internal psychometric properties of the female,andoneunclear)wereusable.The
Brief COPE among visually impaired agesoftheparticipantsrangedfrom12to
persons. Limitations of the Brief COPE 24 years (mean (cid:2) 17.1, SD (cid:2) 2.34). Of
regarding the low reliability coefficients the participants who reported the onset of
andunstablefactorloadingsofsomesub- their visual impairment, 110 were born
scales may be attributed to the fact that visually impaired and 53 became blind
each subscale of the Brief COPE only or developed low vision at different
contained two items. Brevity is a merit of ages. Regarding the severity of their
the Brief COPE; however, it may also visual impairments, 70 were blind (a
havesacrificedtherigorofitspsychomet- best corrected visual acuity of less than
ric properties to some extent. 0.05 or a visual field of less than 10
Against this background, the present degrees), and 95 had low vision (a best
researchtestedtheBriefCOPEinthefirst corrected visual acuity of 0.05 to 0.3).
study in order to preliminarily explore its Blind and low vision were defined ac-
applicabilitytovisuallyimpairedChinese cording to the classification and grading
adolescent students. Based on those re- of disability of the China Disabled Per-
sults, the Brief COPE was modified and sons’ Federation (2011).
renamedasCOPE-Revised.Inthesecond Participants completed the question-
study, the COPE-Revised scores were nairesurveyeitheroncomputersutilizing
tested against the self-esteem scores of a screen-reading software or with a slate
group of participants to examine both the andstylus,dependingonthefacilitiesthat
internal psychometric properties and were available. In the latter method, the
criterion-related validity of the COPE- first author read the questionnaire item
Revised. by item and the participants wrote their
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answers in braille on heavy paper. At the Table1
Cronbach’salphavaluesfortheBriefCOPE
beginning of the surveys, the participants
andCOPE-Revised.
wereinformedthattheywerefreetowith-
draw from the study at any time. The 1ststudy 2ndstudy
(N(cid:2)168) (N(cid:2)170)
survey was approved by the Human Brief COPE-
Scales COPE Revised
Research Ethics Committee for Non-
Clinical Faculties of the authors’ univer- Activecoping .52 .73
sity. Parental consent for participants Planning .60 .74
Positivereframing .76 .72
below age 18 was obtained during the
Instrumentalsupport .51 .72
parent-teacher meeting hosted by the par-
Emotionalsupport .41 .77
ticipating schools. Venting .53 .73
Acceptance .58 .70
INSTRUMENT Self-blame .77 .75
Self-distraction .37 .60
The Chinese version of the Brief COPE
Behaviordisengagement .45 —
(Carver, 1997) translated by Ye (2008)
Humor .84 —
was used to assess coping. It is a 28-item Denial .61 —
inventorycontaining14subscales.Respon- Socialwithdrawal — .67
Wholeinventory .75 .84
dents are required to rate themselves on a
4-point Likert scale, indicating how often “—”indicatesthatthesubscalewasnotinvolved
inthatstudy.
they used the strategy in responding to the
stress events or experiences in each state-
ment. To be consistent with other invento- portant to the participants. Therefore, those
ries used in the larger research project, the two subscales were excluded from subse-
Brief COPE used in the present research quent analyses. Cronbach’s alpha coeffi-
was converted to a 6-point scale, ranging cientwasusedtoestimatetheinternalcon-
from 1 (representing “never”) to 6 (repre- sistency of the subscales (see Table 1).
senting“always”).Researchhasshownthat Consideringthatthiswasthefirststudy
reliabilityandvaliditytendtoincreasefrom that has tested the Brief COPE among
two to six or more response categories visually impaired Chinese adolescents,
(Preston & Colman, 2000); therefore, exploratoryfactoranalysiswasappliedto
changing the Brief COPE from a 4-point explore its factor structure. Eight factors
scaletoa6-pointonemayimproveitspsy- with eigenvalues greater than 1.0 were ob-
chometric properties. tained by principal components analysis
with a Varimax rotation solution, account-
RESULTS ing for 66.61% of the variance in coping
The internal structure of the Brief COPE (see Table 2, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (cid:2) .70).
was assessed through exploratory factor Most of the items were loaded together
analysis and reliability analysis. Results with the other items in the same a priori
of the descriptive analysis showed that subscale (each subscale had two items
most participants (about 90%) chose one, at this point), yet items in four sub-
two,orthreeonitemsinthesubstanceuse scales, including active coping, accep-
subscale and the religion subscale, indicat- tance,self-distraction,anduseofinstru-
ing that these two strategies were not im- mental support, were fragmented.
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Table2
PrincipalcomponentsanalysisoftheBriefCOPEinthefirststudy.
F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8
Planning1 .750
Planning2 .737
Positivereframing2 .729
Positivereframing1 .707
Activecoping1 .660
Acceptance2 .614
Behaviordisengagement2 .744
Behaviordisengagement1 .702
Activecoping2 (cid:3).593
Self-blame2 .893
Self-blame1 .883
Humor2 .890
Humor1 .877
Denial1 .738
Denial2 .709
Acceptance1 (cid:3).567
Venting2 .803
Venting1 .655
Self-distraction2 .605 .467
Emotionalsupport2 .711
Emotionalsupport1 .681
Instrumentalsupport1 .499
Self-distraction1 .652
Instrumentalsupport2 (cid:3).404 .410
Variableswithfactorloadingsoflessthan.40areomitted.
DISCUSSION three items is necessary for a subscale to
In general, the Chinese Brief COPE be identified as a stable factor (Rauben-
had acceptable psychometric properties heimer, 2004). The addition of items to
among adolescents with visual impair- the Brief COPE was thus necessitated.
ments. However, there was still room for In order to offer a basis for modifica-
improvement. Problems with the Brief tions and to triangulate the results of
COPE that were identified in previous the questionnaire survey, interviews with
studies, as reviewed previously here, also ninestudentsandtwoteachers(eachwith
emerged in this study. Specifically, some over 10 years of experience teaching stu-
subscales(suchasself-distractionanduse dents with visual impairments) were car-
of emotional support) had low reliabili- riedout.Thestudentswereinterviewedas
ties, while factor analysis results showed a focus group, and they were asked about
that some subscales (for example, active the major stressors in their lives and how
coping and acceptance) were fragmented. theydealtwiththem.Thenthefirstauthor
As discussed earlier, the fact that there read each item of the Brief COPE to the
were two items per subscale might be the students and asked how they understood
reason. Conventionally, a minimum of each statement, in order to determine the
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JournalofVisualImpairment&Blindness,January-February2017 ©2017AFB,AllRightsReserved
intelligibility of the items to them. In The second study
addition, the first author asked the two The second study aimed at testing the
teachers about their perceptions of the internal psychometric properties and the
major stressors for visually impaired sec- criterion-related validity of the COPE-
ondary school students, and how they Revised. Criterion-related validity was
found students coping with the stress. obtained through investigating the corre-
Based on the results of the survey and lation between coping and self-esteem.
interviews, four modifications were made The literature has documented a close re-
to raise the appropriateness of the Brief lationship between these two constructs.
COPEforadolescentswithvisualimpair- Specifically, relevant research indicated
ments. First, five subscales (substance that adolescents’ self-esteem was corre-
use, religion, humor, behavior disengage- lated positively with problem-focused
ment, and denial) were dropped from the coping (Fickova´, 2000), proactive coping
Brief COPE in the second study. These strategies such as problem solving, and
strategies were very rarely used by visu- seeking support (Lodge & Feldman,
ally impaired Chinese adolescents, ac- 2007; Phinney & Chavira, 1995; Umana-
cording to results from the first study. Taylor,Vargas-Chanes,Garcia,&Gonzales-
Similar results were found in existing Backen, 2008). Their self-esteem corre-
research that utilized the Brief COPE lated negatively with avoidant coping
among Chinese college students (Ye, strategies such as ventilating feelings, re-
2008). Therefore, cultural differences laxation, and avoiding problems (Chap-
between the west and east could be a man & Mullis, 1999); tension reduction
possible reason for these differences. strategies (such as crying and screaming)
Second, as a result of the interviewees’ and wishful thinking (Lodge & Feldman,
opinions, two items were revised to be 2007); and emotion-focused coping strat-
more understandable (see Table 3). egies (wishful thinking, resignation, and
Third, one item was added to each blaming others) (Beka et al., 2006).
subscale from the Brief COPE. Those Accordingly, it was expected that cop-
added items were borrowed from the ing strategies such as active coping, pos-
corresponding subscales of the COPE itive reframing, planning, and seeking
(Carver et al., 1989). Last, a new sub- social support would be more adaptive
scale named social withdrawal was con- and positively correlated with self-esteem,
structed to examine the coping strategy whereas coping strategies such as vent-
of avoiding contact with families and ing, self-distraction, social withdrawal,
friends when faced with stress. This acceptance, and self-blame would be
subscale was added in the second study more maladaptive and negatively corre-
because it was an essential coping strat- lated with self-esteem.
egy for dealing with stress related to
visual impairment as indicated by the PARTICIPANTSANDPROCEDURE
interviewees. The revised inventory Participants were 174 students from an
was renamed COPE-Revised. Table additional four schools for visually im-
3 shows the full version of COPE- paired students in China. There were 170
Revised. usable responses from 99 males and 71
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©2017AFB,AllRightsReserved JournalofVisualImpairment&Blindness,January-February2017
Table3
TheCOPE-Revised.
Subscales Items
Positivereframing Itrytoseeitinadifferentlight,tomakeitseemmorepositive.
Ilookforsomethinggoodinwhatishappening.
Ilearnsomethingfromtheexperience.
Planning Itrytocomeupwithastrategyaboutwhattodo.
Ithinkhardaboutwhatstepstotake.
Imakeaplanofaction.
Activecoping Original:Iconcentratemyeffortsondoingsomethingaboutthe
situationI’min.
Modified:Iconcentratemyeffortstosolvetheproblem.
Itakeactiontotrytomakethesituationbetter.
Itakedirectactiontogetaroundtheproblem.
Self-distraction Iturntoworkorotheractivitiestotakemymindoffthings.
Original:Idosomethingtothinkaboutitless,suchasgoingto
movies,watchingTV,reading,daydreaming,sleeping,orshopping.
Modified:Iplaywithmyphonesorsurfingonlinetothinkaboutitless.
Isleepmorethanusual.
Instrumentalsupport Igethelpandadvicefromotherpeople.
Itrytogetadviceorhelpfromotherpeopleaboutwhattodo.
Iaskpeoplewhohavehadsimilarexperienceswhattheydid.
Emotionalsupport Igetemotionalsupportfromothers.
Igetcomfortandunderstandingfromsomeone.
ItalktosomeoneabouthowIfeel.
Venting Isaythingstoletmyunpleasantfeelingsescape.
Iexpressmynegativefeelings.
Iletmyfeelingsout.
Self-blame Icriticizemyself.
Iblamemyselfforthingsthathappened.
Ithinkthatitwasmyownfault.
Acceptance Iaccepttherealityofthefactthatithashappened.
Ilearntolivewithit.
Iacceptthatthishashappenedandthatitcan’tbechanged.
Socialwithdrawal Iavoidbeingwithpeople.
Ikeepthingstomyself.
Ispendtimealone.
females. The ages of the participants INSTRUMENTS
ranged from 13 to 24 years (mean (cid:2)
COPE-Revised
17.05, SD (cid:2) 2.34). Ninety-five partici-
The COPE-Revised was composed of
pantswerebornvisuallyimpaired,and71
10 three-item subscales. They were ac-
reported acquiring their visual impair-
ment at different ages. Eighty-one partic- tive coping, positive reframing, plan-
ipants were blind, and 87 had low vision. ning, use of emotional support, use of
The same procedure that was used in the instrumental support, venting, accep-
first study was adopted for the second tance, self-distraction, self-blame, and
study. the newly constructed subscale social
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withdrawal. As in the first study, a sically refer to making use of one’s own
6-point Likert-scale format was adopted. behavioral and cognitive efforts in deal-
ing with stress and problems. The second
RosenbergSelf-EsteemQuestionnaire factor was composed of venting, use of
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Question- emotional support, use of instrumental
naire (RSE, Rosenberg, 1965) has 10 support, and self-distraction. As can be
items: five were positively worded and seen, these four strategies indicate one’s
the other five were negatively worded. tendency to turn to other people (for
The RSE assesses self-esteem as a unidi- instance, use of instrumental support)
mensional construct with two polar op- and things (such as self-distraction)
posite factors (positive vs. negative) when facing stress. Hence, this factor
(McKay, Boduszek, & Harvey, 2014). Al- was named other-directed coping. The
though it was designed for sighted people, last factor contained social withdrawal,
researchers have validated it among people acceptance, and self-blame, and was
with visual impairments (Dodds, Bailey, named relinquished-control coping to
Pearson, & Yates, 1991). In their validity indicate the absence of an attempt to
studies, Dodds and his colleagues retained deal with the situation (see also Weisz,
nine items with item-total correlations McCabe, & Dennig, 1994).
higher than 0.5. The present study adopted A confirmatory factor analysis was
these nine items to measure self-esteem. conducted via Amos 21 to test the three-
dimensionalmodelinlinewiththeresults
RESULTS from the exploratory factor analysis. Ac-
Psychometricanalysis cording to Hu and Bentler (1999), the
As shown in Table 1, Cronbach’s alpha fitnessofamodelcanbeevaluatedbythe
coefficients of 10 subscales all exceeded values of RMSEA ((cid:3) 0.6) and SRMR
.60 (Nunnally, 1978). To cross-validate ((cid:3) .08), and CFI and TLI close to or
the COPE-Revised, both exploratory fac- greater than .95, respectively. Although
tor analysis and confirmatory factor anal- these criteria for CFI and TLI have been
ysis were conducted. Three factors were criticized as being too stringent, such in-
retained according to the Scree plot and diceswithvaluesgreaterthan.90reflecta
forcedly extracted using maximum likeli- reasonably good model fit (Marsh, Hau,
hood with Promax rotation solution (see & Wen, 2004). After being revised ac-
Table 4). The three factors explained cording to modification indices, the re-
38.35% of the total variances of the data sults for the three-dimensional model
(Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (cid:2) .80). showed acceptable model fit: Chi-square
The exploratory factor analysis results (df(cid:2)387,N(cid:2)170)(cid:2)547.39,p(cid:4).001,root
indicated that the 10 subscales of the mean squared error of approximation (RM-
COPE-Revised could be converged to SEA) (cid:2) .05, standardized root mean square
three higher-order factors. Active coping, residual (SRMR) (cid:2) .07, and comparative fit
positive reframing, and planning were index (CFI) (cid:2) .91, Tucker-Lewis index
combined in the first factor. This factor (TLI)(cid:2).90.
was termed self-directed coping because The nine-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem
the subsumed coping strategies most ba- QuestionnaireshowedagoodCronbach’s
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©2017AFB,AllRightsReserved JournalofVisualImpairment&Blindness,January-February2017
Table4
PattermatrixoftheCOPE-Revisedinthesecondstudy.
Subscaleitems Factor1 Factor2 Factor3
Activecoping2 .827
Planning2 .799
Planning1 .698
Positivereframing2 .683
Planning3 .662
Activecoping3 .632
Activecoping1 .597
Positivereframing3 .586
Positivereframing1 .526
Emotionalsupport2 .695
Instrumentalsupport1 .672
Emotionalsupport1 .655
Instrumentalsupport2 .618
Emotionalsupport3 .614
Venting3 .589
Venting2 .515
Venting1 .494
Self-distraction3 .457
Self-distraction1 .408
Self-distraction2 .399
Instrumentalsupport3 .352 .365
Self-blame3 .655
Self-blame2 .639
Socialwithdrawal3 .568
Acceptance1 .566
Socialwithdrawal1 .559
Self-blame1 .536
Acceptance3 .517
Socialwithdrawal2 .476
Acceptance2 .428
Variableswithfactorloadingsoflessthan.30areomitted.
alpha coefficient, which was .74. Confir- strategies were significantly positively
matory factor analysis results confirmed correlated with self-esteem, that those
the good data fit of the questionnaire three relinquished-control coping strat-
model with two factors. The model fit egies were significantly negatively cor-
indices of the model were as follows: related with self-esteem, and the four
Chi-square (df (cid:2) 26, N (cid:2) 170) (cid:2) 43.72, other-directed coping strategies were
p (cid:4) .05, RMSEA (cid:2) .06, SRMR (cid:2) .06, not statistically significantly correlated
CFI (cid:2) .96, and TLI (cid:2) .94. with self-esteem.
Therelationshipbetweencoping DISCUSSION
andself-esteem The second study provided evidence
Correlation analysis results (see Table 5) for the good internal reliability and valid-
showedthatthethreeself-directedcoping ity of the COPE-Revised. It obviously
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Table5
Correlationsbetweencopingandself-esteem.
Active Positive Emotional Instrumental
coping reframing Planning support support
Self-esteem .384*** .468*** .394*** .069 .121
Venting Self-distraction Socialwithdrawal Self-blame Acceptance
Self-esteem .033 (cid:3).005 (cid:3).382*** (cid:3).469*** (cid:3).343***
***p(cid:4).001.
achieved better psychometric properties lated with lower levels of self-esteem
than the Brief COPE. This study identi- (Beka et al., 2006; Chapman & Mullis,
fied a hierarchical structure of coping 1999). In the literature, the use of emo-
with three higher-order dimensions (self- tional support and use of instrumental
directed coping, other-directed coping, support have usually been positively cor-
andrelinquished-controlcoping).Consid- related with self-esteem, while the oppo-
ering the fact that only 38.35% of the site has been true for venting and self-
variance was explained by the three fac- distraction (Beka et al., 2006; Chapman
tors, this model should be subjected to & Mullis, 1999). However, in this study,
further testing. Be that as it may, this thecorrelationbetweentheother-directed
three-factor structure of coping is useful coping strategies and self-esteem did not
and constructive. Statistically, confirma- reach statistical significance, which con-
tory factor analysis results lend further tradicted results in previous research. In
supporttothismodel.Theoretically,these this case, the present results imply that
three factors make substantive sense be- coping strategies cannot be simply clas-
causetheyareconceptuallyclearandmu- sifiedaseitheradaptiveormaladaptivein
tually exclusive. terms of their relationships with other
Moreover, correlation analysis results criterion-related variables (for example,
further justified these three higher-order self-esteem in the present study). Instead,
categories. The significant positive corre- there is a neutral party, the other-directed
lation of the subscales subsumed under coping herein, which stands for those
self-directedcoping,andthenegativecor- strategies that may be irrelevant to
relation of the subscales relevant to self-esteem.
relinquished-control coping with self-
General discussion
esteem found in this study are consistent
with what has been shown in the litera- The objective of this research was to val-
ture. Scholars have frequently reported idate and adapt the Brief COPE for ado-
that coping strategies directly dealing lescents with visual impairments in the
with problems were correlated with Chinese context. To this end, two studies
higher levels of self-esteem (Ebata & were conducted. In the first study, the
Moos, 1991; Fickova´, 2000; Phinney & COPE-Revised resulted from modifying
Chavira, 1995; Umana-Taylor et al., the Brief COPE. In the second study,
2008), while avoidant coping was corre- the COPE-Revised demonstrated robust
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©2017AFB,AllRightsReserved JournalofVisualImpairment&Blindness,January-February2017