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Original Article

The Coping Scales From the German Stress and Coping Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents

Psychometric and Factorial Evidence for Five Language Versions

Published Online:July 02, 2019https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000530

Abstract

Abstract. The coping scales from the Stress and Coping Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (SSKJ 3–8; Lohaus, Eschenbeck, Kohlmann, & Klein-Heßling, 2018) are subscales of a theoretically based and empirically validated self-report instrument for assessing, originally in the German language, the five strategies of seeking social support, problem solving, avoidant coping, palliative emotion regulation, and anger-related emotion regulation. The present study examined factorial structure, measurement invariance, and internal consistency across five different language versions: English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian. The original German version was compared to each language version separately. Participants were 5,271 children and adolescents recruited from primary and secondary schools from Germany (n = 3,177), France (n = 329), Russia (n = 378), the Dominican Republic (n = 243), Ukraine (n = 437), and several English-speaking countries such as Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, and the USA (English-speaking sample: n = 707). For the five different language versions of the SSKJ 3–8 coping questionnaire, confirmatory factor analyses showed configural as well as metric and partial scalar invariance (French) or partial metric invariance (English, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian). Internal consistency coefficients of the coping scales were also acceptable to good. Significance of the results was discussed with special emphasis on cross-cultural research on individual differences in coping.

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