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Dealing With Illness scale was designed to assess cognitive and behavioral responses made in efforts to cope with illness and was based on Billings and Moos’ (1981) description of three methods of coping.Items selected for the scale were from Amerikan’s (1985) Dealing With Illness coping instrument and the Moos, Cronkite, Billings, and Finney (1984) Healthand Daily Living Form. Namir et al. further divided the three coping methods conceptually into eight specific coping strategies: active–positive involvement, active–expressive/information seeking, active–reliance on others, cognitive–positive understanding/create meaning, cognitive–passive/ruminative, distraction, passive resignation, and avoidance–solitary/passive behaviors. These eight coping strategies had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s a ranged from .63 to .90; Namir et al., 1987). The second set of items for inclusion in the coping scale were collected through a set of focus groups conducted with HIV-positive young adults and separate focus groups with HIV-positive adults.

Comparisons between the seven- and eight-factor solutions using residual correlation matrices and interpretability of the rotated factor solutions (Fabrigar et al., 1999; Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996) showed that the seven-factor solution yielded comparable residuals to the eight-factor model and more interpretable (i.e., meaningful) rotated factors from the resulting pattern matrices. Therefore, the seven-factor solution was adopted.

Developers:
Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus, William D. Marelich, Debra A. Murphy

Copyright:
Copyright 2003 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

References:
Rotheram-Borus, Marelich, and Murphy (2003). Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33, 3, pp. 627-647.

Reliability:
Cronbach’s alpha for the subscales:

Positive action= .87
Passive problem solving= .65
Self-destructive escape= .80
Social support= .78
Spiritual hope= .73
Depression/withdrawal= .69
Nondisclosure/problem avoidance= .77