Description

The “Brief Religious COPE” (Brief RCOPE) is a psychometric tool designed to assess how individuals use religious strategies to cope with stress and life difficulties. This tool provides a brief yet comprehensive measure of religious coping mechanisms and is divided into two main categories: positive religious coping (e.g., seeking religious support) and negative religious coping (e.g., feeling abandoned by God).

Goals

The primary goals of the Brief RCOPE are:
Assessment of Religious Coping Strategies: To document how individuals use religious and spiritual strategies to cope with difficulties.
Distinction Between Positive and Negative Strategies: To differentiate between positive strategies (such as seeking religious support) and negative strategies (such as feeling abandoned by God).
Understanding Impacts on Mental Health: To examine how different religious coping strategies affect individuals’ mental health and well-being.
Supporting Interventions: To provide data for the development of spiritual and psychological interventions that help individuals cope with stress and difficulties.

Analysis

The analysis of data collected through the Brief RCOPE includes the following steps:
Data Collection: Participants complete a short questionnaire that includes questions about the religious coping strategies they use.
Quantitative Assessment: Responses are scored and statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and correlation analyses to understand the dominant trends and relationships.
Interpretation of Results: The results are interpreted to identify the dominant religious coping strategies and the relationships between these strategies and mental health.
Group Comparison: Differences in religious coping strategies are examined between different demographic, cultural, and religious groups.

Calibration

The calibration of the Brief RCOPE includes:
Ensuring Reliability: Use of reliability indicators, such as Cronbach’s alpha, to assess the internal consistency of responses.
Ensuring Validity: Confirmation of the tool’s validity through methods such as confirmatory factor analysis and other assessment tools.
Retest Trials: Conducting retest trials with different groups of participants to confirm the reliability and validity of the scale in various contexts.

Bibliography

Pargament, K. I., Feuille, M., & Burdzy, D. (2011). “The Brief RCOPE: Current Psychometric Status of a Short Measure of Religious Coping.” Religions, 2(1), 51-76.
Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. (1998). “Patterns of Positive and Negative Religious Coping with Major Life Stressors.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(4), 710-724.
Ano, G. G., & Vasconcelles, E. B. (2005). “Religious Coping and Psychological Adjustment to Stress: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(4), 461-480.
Koenig, H. G., Pargament, K. I., & Nielsen, J. (1998). “Religious Coping and Health Status in Medically Ill Hospitalized Older Adults.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 186(9), 513-521.
Harrison, M. O., Koenig, H. G., Hays, J. C., Eme-Akwari, A. G., & Pargament, K. I. (2001). “The Epidemiology of Religious Coping: A Review of Recent Literature.” International Review of Psychiatry, 13(2), 86-93.