Assessing Religious and Spiritual Aspects of Stress and Coping
Shah, Douglas, & McCarthy
Introduction
Research on stress has been ongoing for decades (Matheny, Aycock, Pugh, Curlette, &
Canella, 1986; McCarthy, Lambert, Beard, & Dematatis, 2002). However, the role of spirituality
or religion in coping with life demands is usually not a focus (Pargament, Ano, & Wachholtz,
2005). Instead, religion is often included in such research in simplistic ways, for example, by
asking if a persons uses prayer to cope without inquiring how an individual is using prayer and/or
religion to understand and subsequently deal with stressors. Pargament, Koenig, and Perez
(2000) emphasized the need for a theoretically based measure of religious coping grounded in a
functional view of religion and how it influences subsequent coping behaviors.
Shah, Douglas, Maheshwari, and McCarthy (2008) developed a measure of positive
religious coping strategies that can be applied to a broad range of belief systems. In an initial
investigation of the construct, focus groups of undergraduate students were utilized by the
researchers to develop as broad a taxonomy as possible of religious coping. The qualitative data
gained from the focus groups suggested four aspects of religious coping that could be useful in
coping with stress and promoting wellness: (1) providing structure to one’s daily life, (2)
providing a sense of community, (3) acceptance of one’s limitations and imperfections, and (4)
provision of a moral code for everyday behavior. Shah et al. (2008) then developed a pilot
version of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping (ABC) that had satisfactory
psychometric properties.
Following these initial steps to develop the ABC, additional instrument development was
necessary to expand the item pool, allow for the inclusion of additional scales that might measure
other important aspects of religious coping, and to assess the validity of the instrument with other
existing measures of relevant constructs. Based on previous development of the measure, it also
seemed to important to evaluate if there was a difference between attitudes about the helpfulness
of religious coping behaviors and the extent to which one actual employs such behaviors in
coping with stress.
These research purposes provided the justification for the present study. Specifically, the
first purpose was to examine the construct validity of the ABC to expand on the findings of Shah
et al. (2008) with larger sample size and using an expanded set of items for the instrument. The
second aim of the study was to explore the convergent and discriminant validity of the ABC with
related measures of religious coping, psychological coping resources, coping strategies, and life
satisfaction.
Method
Participants
The participants were 315 undergraduate students from a large southwestern university.
The sample was predominantly European American (40.6%), Asian American (33%), and
Hispanic American (21.3%).
Procedure
Participants completed the questionnaires described below using an online survey in
return for course credit.
Measures
Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping (ABC, Shah et al., 2008).
The ABC is a two-part, 40-item measure (each part containing 20 items). The first part measures
attitudes about the helpfulness of religious coping behaviors, and the second asks respondents to
rate the frequency with which they engage in the same behaviors in an effort to manage their
stress. Cronbach’s alpha for the attitude part was .961 and was .979 for the behavior part.
Preventive Resources Inventory (PRI; McCarthy et al., 2002). The Social
Resourcefulness scale from the PRI was used as a measure of the ability to use relationships with
others as a buffer against life demands (Lambert, McCarthy, Gilbert, Sebree, & SteinleyBumgarner, 2006). Reliability and validity evidence for the use of PRI scores has been
demonstrated in previous research by McCarthy et al., (2002) and Lambert et al. (2006).
Cronbach’s alpha for the current study was .899.
Brief RCOPE (Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1999). The Brief RCOPE is a 14item measure of positive and negative religious coping behaviors. Favorable reliability and
validity evidence was established within community, university, and hospitalized samples.
Cronbach’s alpha for each subscale for the current study was as follows: positive religious
coping (.957) and negative religious coping (.799).
Ways of Religious Coping Scale (WORCS; Boudreaux, Catz, Ryan, Amaral-Melendez,
1995). The WORCS is a 40-item scale aimed at “assessing the degree and kind of religious
cognitions and behaviors people use to cope with stress” (Boudreax et al., 1995). The authors of
the measure found established favorable reliability and validity in their initial development of the
scale. Cronbach’s alpha for the current study is .958.
Results and Discussion
Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) were used to address the first research purpose of the
study. The EFA for the attitude subscale revealed three correlated factors: sense of community,
personal relationship with a higher power, and worldview. The EFA for the behavior subscale,
however, revealed only two factors. The first factor captured the social connectedness aspect of
religion and the second seemed to encompass a more general sense of spiritual involvement.
Correlations between both ABC scales and the other study measures were analyzed to
address the second research objective of the study. Each measure was correlated with the ABC
in the expected direction. For example, there were significant positive correlations between the
ABC and the Brief RCOPE, the Ways of Religious Coping, and the Social Resourcefulness scale
of the PRI.
The results of this study suggest that religious coping may have two important
dimensions, attitudes and behaviors, which may be conceptually distinct and have differential
relationships to other coping constructs. While respondents to the ABC seemed to separate their
attitudes about the usefulness of religion in coping with stress into different, related categories
(sense of community, personal relationship with a higher power, and worldview), they do not
categorize their behaviors in the same way. Furthermore, the factor structure of the behavior
subscale of the ABC seems to map onto a conceptualization of religious practices as being either
“organized religion” or “spirituality.”
The complete version of this proposal will further discuss the reliability and validity of
the ABC as compared to other, related measures, as well as identify limitations and directions for
future research.
References
Lambert, R. G., McCarthy, C. J., Gilbert, T., Sebree, M., & Steinley-Bumgarner, M. (2006).
Validity evidence for the use of the Preventive Resources Inventory with college students
Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 39, 66-83.
Matheny, K.B., Aycock, D.W., Pugh, J.L., Curlette, W.L., & Canella, K.A. (1986). Stress
coping: A qualitative and quantitative synthesis with implications for treatment. The
Counseling Psychologist, 14(4), 499-549.
McCarthy, C. J., Lambert, R. G., Beard, L. M., & Dematatis, A. P. (2002). Factor structure of
the Preventive Resources Inventory and its relationship to existing measures of stress
and coping. In G. S. Gates, M. Wolverton, , & W. H. Gmelch (Eds.), Research on Stress
and Coping in Education (pp. 3-37). Greenwich, Connecticut: Information Age
Publishing, Inc.
Shah, M., Douglas, R., Maheshwari, D., McCarthy, C. (2008). Assessing the Role of Religion
and Spirituality in Coping with Life Demands. Poster presentation at American
Psychological Association Annual Convention. August 17, 2008.