Planful coping and depression: a cross cultural latent structural analysis Poster presentation at the American Psychological Association (APA) annual meeting , Washington D.C. August 2005 Kimberly K. Asner-Self Southern Illinois University - Carbondale James B. Schreiber Duquesne University Maria Cecilia Zea George Washington University Cindy L. Anderton Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

Introduction The Behavioral Attributes of Psychosocial Competence – Condensed scale (BAPC-C; Zea, Reisen & Tyler, 1996) is a 13-item instrument empirically derived from the 39-item BAPC-AR (Tyler & Pargament, 1981) to measure proactive, planful, competent coping and has been normed on a diverse ethnic group of U.S. University students. The BAPC-C has good internal reliability and good concurrent validity as a whole and across U.S. university student ethnic groups (Zea, et al., 1996)

To date, no-one has examined the psychometric properties of the BAPC-C on International students to the U.S. The BAPC-C’s reported factor structure included two factors: one looking at active coping (9 items) and a second that measures active emotional coping (4 items) (Zea et al., 1996). Not been used by sub-score and no one has looked at what impact active task planning and emotional coping might have had in previous studies. No published studies on structural analysis of the BAPC-C on International students to the U.S. and the link between active coping and depression

Research Goals 1 and 2 The primary goals of this study: Examine the structural validity of the BAPC-C and its psychometric properties with international students, and Examine the correlated data between active planning and depression

Method - Participants International students at a large Midwestern public university. n = 207; 12 surveys incomplete leaving 195 usable documents 105 women, 89 men, 1 did not report Mean age = 26.94 (SD = 5.59). 135 were undergraduates and 60 graduate students. 138 respondents were single and 57 were married

125 students from Asian countries 28 students from Europe 19 students from Africa 3.1% (6 students) identified themselves as being from the Middle East, Latin America, or the U.S (of non-US parents, raised outside US). 4 students from the Caribbean 1 student from New Zealand

Method - Procedure Students voluntarily completed a survey packet containing a demographic sheet , the BAPC-C, the Beck Depression Inventory – Short Form (BDI-SF; Beck & Beck, 1972; Beck, Rial, & Rickels, 1974). The measures were counterbalanced to mitigate test fatigue and they took approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Method - Instrumentation Behavioral Attributes of Psychosocial Competence - Condensed 13-item, self-report, paper and pencil scale Derived from the original BAP-AR (39 items) Reported alphas for internal reliability and test-retest reliability are good .76 and .86 respectively with college students Concurrent validity with the BAPC-AR was r= .89 Concurrent validity with the COPE Inventory was adequate at r = .47 (Zea, Reisen & Tyler, 1996)

The BAPC-C Factor Model in the Literature Empirically Derived Factor Structure Includes two factors: one looking at active coping, and a second that measured active emotional coping (personal communication C. Reisen, February 16, 2004).

Analysis 1. Conducted two confirmatory factor analyses using M-Plus software to examine first the structural validity of the model and second a modified BAPC-C with 12-items to determine the most coherent, parsimonious, and meaningful structure. 2. Conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine the relationship between depression, active coping, and gender in this sample of international students

Table 1: International students BAPC-C and BDI-SF score range, means, standard deviations, and coefficient alphas (gender for exploration) Scores range Mean s.d. alpha BAPC-C Total 1-13 9.17 2.62 .66 Women 1-13 9.37 2.79 .73 Men 3-13 8.92 2.42 .57 BDI-SF Total 0-24 3.28 3.82 .83 Women 0-24 3.50 4.23 .86 Men 0-16 2.97 3.26 .78

Internal consistency for this sample’s BAPC-C scores was Internal consistency for this sample’s BAPC-C scores was .66 for all 13-items less than the .74 to .78 reported in the literature with Latino gay and lesbian adults and U.S. ethnically diverse postsecondary students (Reisen et al., 1997; Zea et al., 1996, 1999). A closer look at the internal consistency scores suggest that the men’s scores are less likely to hang together than the women’s scores in this sample.

Table 2: Confirmatory Factor Analyses Fit Indices of the 2 Models (N = 207) Chi-Square df CFI RMSEA Original 13-item Model 63.27 40 .890 .054 Modified 12-item Model (w/o #4) 58.36 38 .904 .052

Noncentrality based indices: Tests take into account non-central chi-square distribution when Ha is true. Root-mean-square-estimate approximation (RMSEA) penalizes for complexity, less than .05 to .08 are the cutoff for acceptance. Comparative Fit Index (CFI) not normed so the index is not bound between zero and one. Values can be less than zero or greater than one. Cutoff for acceptance is .90.

Results for Research Goal 1 The resulting CFI indicated an improved model fit, to .904, but not necessarily enough improvement to warrant dropping item 4 without further study. Results still support the two factor 13 item BAPC-C model as an “adequate,” (Kline, 1998) if not parsimonious, and meaningful fit with these data

Analysis of Variance - Gender and Active planning on depression Two analyses of variance (ANOVA) were used to determine the impact of the 13 item BAPC-C total and subscales (active task planning and active emotional coping) on depression.

TABLE 3: ANOVA 1 – BAPC on Depression

TABLE 4: ANOVA 2 – BAPC-C Subscales on Depression

Results for Research Goal 2 Findings indicated that depression scores were significantly correlated with overall active planfulness supporting earlier work. Interestingly, only the subcomponent on active task coping was significantly correlated with depression scores.

Discussion Findings support using the 13-item BAPC-C in its entirety as a measure of “active planful coping.” Sub-scores “active task planning” and “active emotional coping” however need further study. Removing # 4 - participants’ belief that they actively seek interpersonal relationships when in a new environment or take a more passive approach seems counter intuitive. BAPC-C internal consistency was somewhat below earlier reports (Reisen, et al., 1997; Zea et al., 1996, 1999), however, a Cronbach’s alpha of .66 is sufficient enough for research purposes.

Students’ planful coping was inversely related to depression supporting earlier supporting earlier research (Poppen & Reisen, 1997; Zea et al., 1999). Internal reliability for the active, emotional coping subscale was .52 suggesting that items (8, 9, 12, 13) on this subscale may not be sufficiently measuring this particular construct.

Implications Of interest to clinicians and university administrators designing programs to increase international student retention and success in U.S. schools is the relationship between active coping and depression. Teaching students’ about their emotional responses to events and alternative methods to manage those emotions is not new (for example, anger management, learned optimism, and rational emotive behavioral therapy). However, working with people from other cultures requires sensitivity, knowledge, and awareness. How a person copes may very well be a culturally learned construct. To suggest that a cultural coping modality out of context is valenced in any way would be fallacious and potentially psychologically harmful. Programs designed to address active coping as a tool that can be used within the U.S. many help to inoculate international students against depression.

Further research Additional structural and psychometric study of the BAPC-C with this and other populations Longitudinal study to determine if active coping is a mediating factor for depression among international students