Psychometric Evaluation of the Coping Strategies Inventories Short Form (CSI-SF) Among Korean American Adolescents

Background and Purpose: Korean American (KA) adolescents may experience more additional conflicts with parents due to cultural differences although intergenerational conflicts are quite common in adolescence. KA adolescents who were born in the States, or immigrated to the States at their early ages, tend to deviate from the traditional values and behaviors their parents expect of them. Due to this cultural dissonance, KA adolescents may distance themselves from parents, and if they try to resolve the conflicts with parents by withdrawal, they are more likely to experience mental health problems as well as externalizing problems (Branje, van Doorn, van der Valk, & Meeus, 2009). Since the original Coping Strategies Inventories (CSI) was developed by Tobin et al. (1989), many studies used this instrument and reported the instrument as a valid measure of the coping. Unfortunately, however, relatively little is known about psychometric results of coping measures among KA adolescents. The purpose of this study is to examine the psychometric properties and the factor structures of Coping Strategies Inventory Short Form (CSI-SF) that was administered among Korean American adolescents.  

 

Methods: The participants were recruited from Korean ethnic churches in the summer of 2014.  The study employed a convenience sampling method and the participants had to meet the following eligibility criteria: (1) have at least one parent who immigrated from Korea; (2) reside with at least one parent; (3) maintained contact with both parents; (4) 12 to 18 years of age; (5) able to read and understand English; and (6) resided in New York and New Jersey at the time of investigation.  A total sample consisted of 340 KA adolescents. 

Results: Bartlett’s test of sphericity indicated that this data set is appropriate for factor analysis (χ²= 4271.951,  p<.001), and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy indicated a value of .826, which showed that the degree of common variance is good. The factors loading for each item are all greater than the cutoff point ( <.4), and 32 items are retained in the final model. The eight factors were generated from the CSI based on a basic scree-test and eigenvalue greater than 1 rule: Problem Solving (PS), Cognitive Restructuring (CR), Express Emotions (EE), Social Contact (SC), Problem Avoidance (PA), Wishful Thinking (WT), Self Criticism (SC), and Social Withdrawal (SW). These eight factors which were rotated to position of maximum orthogonality in five iterations, explain 64.4% of variances. While the overall structure of eight factors is similar to Tobin’s primary subscale model (1989), a slight different structure emerged depending on the differences in factor loadings for some items. Internal consistency for each of the scales was examined using Cronbach’s alpha. The alphas were good ranging from .688 to .876.

Conclusions and Implications: To understand the role of coping with conflicts with parents with accuracy, empirical evaluation of the coping measures should precede further studies. The findings showed that Tobin’s CSI-SF had good psychometric properties among Korean American adolescents, and provided empirical support for utilizing this instrument for Korean American adolescents’ coping behaviors.