Coping behaviour checklist for Chinese children: development and psychometric testing

This paper is a report of development and psychometric testing of the coping behaviour checklist for Chinese children.

An understanding of the coping behaviour of children is an essential prerequisite for the design of an appropriate psychological intervention to enhance children's ability to cope with stressful medical procedures and hospitalization. Review of literature reveals that there is lack of child-sensitive measurement tools in the Chinese culture for assessing coping behaviours of children with good psychometric properties.

An instrument development and validation study was conducted. Phase 1 was designed to develop a checklist of coping behaviour for Chinese children, while in phase 2 the psychometric properties of the new scale were tested. A total of 168 (phase 1) and 236 (phase 2) children between the ages of 7 and 12 years, were invited to participate in this study in 2008 and 2009, respectively; 228 completed both phases of data collection.

On the basis of the results of qualitative interview data, the coping behaviour checklist for Chinese children was developed. The newly developed scale had adequate internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability, high content validity and appropriate construct validity. Confirmatory factor analysis further added evidence of the construct validity of the scale.

The instrument can be used to identify the coping behaviour of Hong Kong Chinese children aged between 7 and 12 years. Knowing the coping behaviour of children in advance can help nurses to shape and design appropriate psychological interventions that can help children better cope with stressful medical procedures and hospitalization.