Psychometric properties of Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced in patients with multiple chronic conditions: A preliminary study.

Background: Multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) are highly prevalent in primary care. Coping is an important psychological factor that influences patients' ability to adapt physically and mentally to MCCs. Testing a reliable and valid psychometric inventory is necessary to identify coping strategies before developing coping-oriented interventions.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced (Brief COPE-CN) inventory in patients with MCCs.

Method: This study adopted a cross-sectional design. A convenience sample of 290 Chinese patients with MCCs was recruited from a tertiary hospital in East China. The Brief COPE-CN, sociodemographic characteristics and clinical data were collected using a self-reported questionnaire from November 2017 to May 2018. Factor analysis and reliability analysis were performed.

Results: The mean age of the participants was 58.5 years (range from 23 to 95 years), and approximately half of the participants were female (49.3%). Most participants had two chronic conditions (82.1%) and reported having had MCCs for more than 2 years. The explanatory factor analysis (EFA) identified five factors in the Brief COPE-CN that explained 58.4% of the total variance. The Cronbach's α coefficients ranged from .65 to .85 for the five subscales.

Conclusions: The psychometric properties of the Brief COPE-CN were acceptable for use with Chinese patients with MCCs. With further evaluation, this instrument may help health-care professionals understand patients' coping and develop coping-based interventions to promote coping in this population.