The structure and properties of the Estonian COPE inventory

The COPE (Carver, Scheier & Weintraub, 1989) is a multidimensional coping i nventory to assess the different ways people respond to stress. The present article is about the structure and psychometric properties of the Estonian dispositional COPE. Compared to the original scales the internal reliabili ties of the adapted scales were entirely satisfactory (i.e. alphas ranged f rom 0.49 for Restraint Coping to 0.95 for Alcohol/Drug Use). A cluster anal ysis with 60 items and a second-order factor analysis with 15 primary scale s suggested three underlying factors identified as Task, Avoidance, and Soc ial/Emotional. The three secondary COPE scales were almost independent, exc ept the relation between the Task and the Social/Emotional scale (r = 0.17, P < 0.001). Women averaged strikingly higher on the Social/Emotional scale whereas men scored higher on the Task scale. A small group of participants (N = 33) completed the COPE twice (interval = 27 months), the test-retest correlations were r = 0.33 (n.s.) for the Task, r = 0.61 (P < 0.001) for th e Avoidance, and v = 0.62 (P < 0.001) for the Social/Emotional scales, resp ectively. The correlations between the Estonian COPE and the Estonian NEO-P I (Pulver, Allik, Hamalainen & Pulkkinen, 1995) demonstrated that the Eston ian COPE scales can be meaningfully viewed in a larger dispositional contex t marked by the Big Five personality traits. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.