Ways of Coping Inventory (WCI)

The Ways of Coping Inventory (WCI) was developed by Folkman and Lazarus (1985) in order to assess the coping processes following stressful situations. The original scale was composed of 66 items. The Turkish adaptation of WCI (Siva, 1991) includes 74 items because 8 items representing fatalism of Turkish people in dealing with stressful situations were added to the scale.

In their study conducted with survivors of Dinar earthquake, Karanci,Alkan, Akşit, Sucuoğlu, and Balta, (1999) shortened WCI into 42 items and the response format reduced to 3–points. The results of the factor analysis revealed 5 factors namely, problem solving/optimistic (α = .75), fatalistic (α = .78), helplessness (α = .69), social support (α = .59), and escape (α = .51). Furthermore, the factor analysis results of Kesimci (2003) revealed four factors namely, fatalistic coping, optimistic/seeking social support coping, problem solving coping, and helplessness coping, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .90, .76, .81, and .78, respectively.

In the present study, 42 item, shortened form, and four–factor solution (fatalistic coping, optimistic/seeking social support coping, problem solving coping, and helplessness coping) of WCI was used. Items of the scale were rated on 4–point Likert type scale ranging from 0 (never) to 3 (always). The internal reliability coefficient of the total WCI was very high (α = .95). Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of fatalistic, optimistic/seeking social support, problem solving, and helplessness coping subscales were .90, .88, .92, and .85, respectively. The scale is presented in Appendix D.