Description

The “Brief Measure of Religious Coping” (Brief RCOPE) is a psychometric tool developed to assess how individuals use religious and spiritual strategies to cope with stress and life difficulties. This tool provides a concise yet comprehensive measurement of religious coping mechanisms and is divided into two main dimensions: positive and negative religious coping.

Goals

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

Analysis

The analysis of data collected through the Brief RCOPE involves 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.