Parents of Children With Pervasive Developmental Disorders and Their Coping Stategies

The purpose of this study is to investigate the coping strategies used by parents of children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD). Par-ents of 43 children with PDD were selected through random sampling method and matched on age, educa-tion, and sex of children as well. A control group of 43 parents of child-ren without documented physiologi- cal/psychological problems were sele- cted using simple sampling method from two districts of Tehran (2 & 6).All participants were asked to fill in the Coping Responses Inventory (Bill-ings & Moos, 1981). This inventory measures 5 types of coping strategies including appraisal-focused coping (5- items), problem-focused coping (3 ite-ms), emotion-focused coping (11 ite-ms), somatic-focused coping (9 items) and social support focused coping (4 items). The test-retest reliability coeff-icient of this inventory is 0.80. Also the reliability of each subscale of this inventory is 0.90 for problem-focused coping, 0.60 for emotion-focused cop-ing, 0.68 for appraisal-focused coping, 0.90 for somatic-focused coping and 0.90 for social support focused coping. Statistical analyses showed that moth-ers of children with PDD tend to use more somatic-focused coping strategi-es. There were no other differences between the two groups. In both grou-ps, father used more appraisal-focused and problem-focused coping strategi-es, but mothers were somatic-focused and emotion-focused.