The ABI-MS: a coping inventory focusing on medicial settings

Abstract

Background: Medical treatment can be stressful for patients, which could negatively affect wound healing and adjustment during recovery. Hence, the assessment of how individuals cope with stressful medical procedures seems important. This study reports on the construction and empirical evaluation of a coping inventory focusing on medical settings. Methods: The ABI-MS, is based on the model of coping modes (Krohne, 1993) and aims to assess vigilant and cognitive avoidant coping in potentially threatening medical scenarios. It is organized as a stimulus-response inventory. To evaluate the factorial structure of the inventory an online survey was used. 471 individuals (345 women, 126 men) with a mean age of 28.4 years participated. After completing demographic questions, they worked on the ABI-MS and related coping questionnaires. Psychometric properties were examined and confirmatory full-information factor analysis based on the item response theory was calculated. Findings: Four scenarios proved particularly suitable to assess vigilance and cognitive avoidance (venipuncture, wound care of a cut injury, narcosis prior to surgery, and colonoscopy). Each scenario allows forced-choice ratings (true/not true) on four vigilant und four cognitive avoidant strategies, resulting in a total of 32 items. Cronbach’s alpha is satisfactory between .74 and .77. To asses convergent validity spearman-rank correlations revealed that the ABI-MS significantly correlates with the physical threat subtest (r=.426, p<.001) and with the ego threat subtest (r=.346, p<.001) of the Mainz Coping Inventory. Taken together, the results indicate that the ABI-MS is a reliable and valid instrument to assess vigilant and cognitive avoidant coping on medical settings.