THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SHORTENED WAYS OF COPING QUESTIONNAIRE FOR USE WITH DIRECT-CARE STAFF IN LEARNING-DISABILITY SERVICES

This study reports the development of the Shortened Ways of Coping (Re vised) Questionnaire (SWC-R), a measure of staff coping strategies des igned to be easily administered and scored in work settings. The 14-it em self-report measure is scored into two subscales, Practical Coping and Wishful Thinking, representing distinct Ways of Coping. The reliab ility of the SWC-R was evaluated by administering questionnaires conta ining the SWC-R to 181 direct care staff in four learning disability s ervices and, in an attempt to explore issues of validity, measures of social desirability, distress, overall job satisfaction, overall life satisfaction, and propensity to leave the organisation. A subset of 30 staff completed the questionnaire twice over a 16-month period, enabl ing some exploration of test-retest reliability and predictive validit y. Both subscales show adequate psychometric properties in terms of al pha reliabilities, inter-item correlations, inter-scale correlations, and test-retest reliabilities. While the Wishful Thinking subscale is prone to a social desirability bias, exclusion of such a measure from analyses does not seem to lead to false positive errors. The Wishful T hinking subscale shows a reliable positive association with distress ( even over a 16-month period) and some negative associations with overa ll life satisfaction, but the Practical Coping subscale is associated with none of the outcome measures used in the study. The further use o f the SWC-R in research concerning direct care staff in human services is recommended.