Brazilian Validation of the Brief Scale for Spiritual/Religious Coping—SRCOPE-14

Abstract

The concept of spiritual-religious coping gained attention in Brazil with the adaptation and validation of the RCOPE Scale (Panzini 2004; long version: 87 items and brief version: 49 items). The Brief RCOPE still contains a large number of items, so attempts to further reduce the size of the measure are relevant. This study presents the validation process of the Brief SRCOPE scale (14 items) for use in the Brazilian context. Data were collected from the general population (N = 525) and subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA; n = 249) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; n = 276). The EFA resulted in a two-factor solution: Positive Religious Coping (PRC) and Negative Religious Coping (NRC). All 14 items of the original scale were retained and correlated with the same factor as the original scale (KMO = 0.852; 58.15% of total variance explained; PRC Cronbach’s alpha = 0.884 and NRC Cronbach’s alpha = 0.845). The model tested through CFA showed adequate adjustment indices (χ2 = 146.809, DF = 70, χ2/DF = 2.097, NFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.962, GFI = 0.930, AGFI = 0.895, RMSEA = 0.063, PCLOSE = 0.065 and SRMR = 0.0735). The Brief SRCOPE Scale-14 has shown reliability for the studied sample and might be applicable to other contexts. It may ultimately prove useful to professionals and researchers interested in better knowing how people make use of religious coping to face stress and suffering.