Coping and catastrophizing in chronic pain: a psychometric analysis and comparison of two measures

We analyzed and compared the psychometric properties of two measures of strategiesfor coping with pain:The Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ) and the Cognitive Coping Strategies Inventory (CCSI). The CSQ and CCSI were repeatedly administered to 30 chronic pain patients. Several subscales of both measures showed inadequate internal consistency, and test-retest (one week interval) reliability lower than 0.7. For each inventory, moderate to strong intercorrelations between several subscales were observed. The Catastrophizing subscale was the only subscale for which there was clear evidence of construct validity. Results indicated that both measures showed similar psychometric difficulties, and question the construct validity of subscales other than Catastrophizing. Catastrophizing, however, more closely reflects appraisal processes than a coping strategy per se. We suggest that measures that use more parsimonious and empirically derived coping strategy subscales and that also assess appraisal factors would assist in advancing our understanding of coping with chronic pain.