Developing a Coping Strategies Scale in Iranian Students: Parallel Forms

In order to develop an instrument for measuring coping strategies, a questionnaire was administered to 496 females, 649 males Iranian students selected by multi-stage sampling method. After conducting several explanatory factor analysis using oblique rotation (in two stages), 100 items were selected that had high item total correlation (> 0.4) and factor loadings (> 0.35). These items distingui- shed 8 coping strategies: 1) Social support, 2) spiritual support (religious), 3) cognitive restructuring, 4) problem solving, 5) wishful thinkibg and worry, 6) distracting (Phy- sically and emotionally), 7) cognitive avoidance), 8) sub- mission, and accounted for 33% of the variance. Two forms of the questionnaire, each consisting of 50 items, were developed based on similarity in content and equal factor loading such that the correlation coefficients bet- ween the factors of the two forms were significant and the difference in their means was insignificant. Cronbach's al- pha for the two forms were 0.910 and 0.913 and SE were 3.60 and 3.61 respectively. Factor analysis of the forms confirmed 8 factors. Psychometric indices were calculated for the factors and their theoretical bases are discussed.