Locus of coping in a sample of Chinese working parents: Reliance on self or seeking help from others

The Chinese Coping Scale (CCS) was constructed to assess the coping responses of Chinese people to stress in the marital, familial, interpersonal and occupational domains. This scale was administered to 1000 Chinese adults to examine the psychometric properties of the CCS and to test the hypothesis that coping responses of Chinese people could be categorized into two types: reliance on self (i.e., internal locus of coping) and seeking help from others (i.e., external locus of coping). The reliability results indicated that the CCS demonstrated acceptable internal consistency as a scale in different domains. Both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis endorsed the adequacy of the two -factor model for coping responses within and across the four domains. Favorable evidence arising from the cross-validation procedure was also found. The implications of the present data on the conceptualization and measurement of coping are discussed.