Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors

This study attempted to identify positive and negative patterns of religiou s coping methods, develop a brief measure of these religious coping pattern s, and examine their implications for health and adjustment. Through explor atory and confirmatory factor analyses. positive and negative religious cop ing patterns were identified in samples of people coping with the Oklahoma City bombing, college students coping with major life stressors, and elderl y hospitalized patients coping with serious medical illnesses. A 14-item me asure of positive and negative patterns of religious coping methods (Brief RCOPE) was constructed. The positive pattern consisted of religious forgive ness, seeking spiritual support, collaborative religious coping, spiritual connection, religious purification, and benevolent religious reappraisal. T he negative pattern was defined by spiritual discontent, punishing God reap praisals, interpersonal religious discontent. demonic reappraisal, and reap praisal of God's powers. As predicted, people made more use of the positive than the negative religious coping methods. Furthermore, the two patterns had different implications for health and adjustment. The Brief RCOPE offer s an efficient, theoretically meaningful way to integrate religious dimensi ons into models and studies of stress, coping, and health.