Coping with stressful medical situations: assessing children's strategies
| dc.contributor.author | Costello, Louise Michele | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Bavelas, Janet Beavin | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Duncan, Pam | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-07-03T23:49:44Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-07-03T23:49:44Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 1992 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Psychology | |
| dc.description.abstract | Research on how children cope in medical settings has been hampered by the lack of a validated measure of strategy use which is sensitive t o coping as a process, as well as to personal appraisal of the coping situation. In the course of this research, such a measure was developed. The new instrument is a card sort task where possible strategies are depicted in simple captioned drawings, and children are asked for their appraisals of the situation in terms of fear, pain, and control expectations. The psychometric properties of the Coping Strategies Card Sort (CSCS) were examined in a school-based study involving 139 primary aged children, and a subsequent hospital study involving 10 children. The six subscales of the CSCS were shown to have adequate internal consistency, test-retest, and parallel forms reliabilities. Interesting patterns of relationship emerged among some of the subscales of the CSCS, as well as the Situational Appraisal Index, and measures of anxiety, health locus of control, and social desirability. Parental descriptions of children's strategy use did not match the children's own descriptions. In the hospital setting, the children's predictions and post- hoc descriptions of strategy use matched observed behaviours moderately well to very well for most of the participants. | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22461 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | |
| dc.title | Coping with stressful medical situations: assessing children's strategies | |
| dc.type | Thesis |