THE COPING STRATEGIES QUESTIONNAIRE - A LARGE-SAMPLE, ITEM LEVEL FACTOR-ANALYSIS

Objective: The Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ), a measure of cop ing in chronic pain patients, was subjected to item-level exploratory factor analysis.Subjects: A sample of 965 chronic pain patients were u sed in the analysis. Results: Principal components analysis using a va rimax rotation procedure identified nine factors that accounted for 54 .5% of the variance. Of these nine factors, the first five represent s ubscales of the original CSQ subscales. The catastrophizing subscale r eplicated with significant loadings for all six original items, and ig noring sensations replicated with five of six items. Factors represent ing reinterpreting pain sensations, coping self-statements, and divert ing attention subscales also appeared. The items from the praying and hoping subscale split into separate praying and hoping factors (factor s 6 and 8). When reliability coefficients were calculated, factors 7 t hrough 9 had unacceptably low internal consistency and thus were not c onsidered stable factors. Correlations between factors 1 through 6 and other measures of psychological and physical functioning were calcula ted in the construct validation portion of this study. Previously foun d relationships were replicated in that the correlations between CSQ f actor scores and measures of pain, depression, and disability were in the same direction in this data set as those previously reported.