KidCOPE

Overview

A brief checklist designed to measure cognitive and behavioural coping in children and adolescents. Checklist asks children and young people to rate the frequency and efficacy of various coping strategies, including: problem-solving, distraction, social support, social withdrawal, cognitive restructuring, self-criticism, blaming others, emotional expression, wishful thinking and resignation.

Psychometric properties

Property	Definition	KidCOPE
Test-retest reliability	Degree to which same respondents have similar scores after a period of time in which the trait being measured would not be expected to have changed	Moderate (0.41) to fairly high (0.83) test-retest reliability over a short duration (3 to 7 days) was found in the original development of the measure, this dropped to low (0.15) to moderate (0.43) for longer intervals. (Spirito, Stark & Williams, 1988)
Convergent validity	Do the measure responses correlate with a scale we are confident measures the same construct?	KidCOPE results were correlated with results from the Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI) as part of the original development of the measure. (Spirito, Stark & Williams, 1988)

Suitability

Available in self-report versions for children ages 7-12, and adolescents ages 13-18.

Translation

We are not currently aware of any non-English versions of this measure. Please contact the measure developer for further information on translated versions.

Administration

Copies of the measure can be obtained by contacting the author.

Scoring and interpretation

For the adolescent version, items related to frequency are scored on a 4 point scale (0 = “Not at all” to 3 = “Almost all the time”), and items related to efficacy are rated on a 5 point scale (0 = “Not at all” to 4 = “Very much”)

Terms of use

KidCOPE is available in the public domain, is not copyrighted, and may be used at no charge for non-commercial purposes. The KidCOPE was authored by Anthony Spirito, and citation should be used when referencing this work.

References

Spirito, A., Stark, L. J., & Williams, C. (1988). Development of a brief coping checklist for use with pediatric populations. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 13(4), 555–574.