CSQ: five factors or fiction?
OBJECTIVE
The Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ), a rationally constructed pain coping assessment instrument, was conceived to measure the extent to which patients used six different cognitive coping strategies and two behavioral coping strategies. A number of studies have factor analyzed the original scales but have not found a reliable factor structure. Recent studies by Turtle et al. and Swartzman et al. have obtained a five-factor solution performing exploratory factor analysis on the individual items. Robinson and associates from the University of Florida performed an item level exploratory factor analysis on a much larger sample (n = 965) and found a six-factor solution that was relatively supportive of the original rationally derived scales. The purpose of the present investigation was to perform a confirmatory factor analysis using the LISREL structural equation modeling program to compare these three different factor structures.


METHODS
A sample of 472 chronic patients was used.


CONCLUSIONS
The results indicated that the Florida six-factor model was a better fit to the sample data than either of the five-factor models. Creation of the Coping Strategy Questionnaire Revised (CSQ-R), which retains 27 of the original items, is suggested.
Riley
J L
JL
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville 32610, USA.
Robinson
M E
ME
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D002908:Chronic Disease; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires