ASSESSING THE DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE OF COPING - A CROSS-CULTURAL-COMPARISON

The Ways of Coping Questionnaire (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988) yields eigh t scales which purport to measure eight unique coping styles. Using Mu lti-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) this study seeks to find the underlying dimensional structure of the Ways of Coping Questionnaire, using three samples: (I) Folkman and Lazarus' normative sample (1988, N=150), (2) a Canadian normative sample (N=385; Sinha, Willson, Madhukar, & Watso n, unpublished manuscript), (3) an East Indian sample (N=199; Sinha et al., unpublished manuscript). Analysis yields one interpretable dimen sion which appears to be effective/ineffective coping strategies. To p rovide a more rigorous comparison, Spearman's rank-order correlations of the MDS solutions were examined, and confirmatory factor analysis w as performed on the eight scales. Some cultural differences are noted between the Canadian normal sample and the Indian sample: although the effective/ineffective dimension is supported across cultures, rank-or dering of the MDS loadings of the eight scales shows that there is onl y a small correlation between the loadings of these two samples.