Introduction

Theoretical precursors from coping research defined it as an action-oriented and intrapsychic effort to manage the demands created by stressful events (Lazarus & Folkman, 1991; Taylor & Stanton, 2007; Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996). When individuals use coping daily, they apply their coping strategies (Holahan & Moos, 1987). Coping strategies are essential to an individual’s adaptation during a personal crisis or a stressful event (Heffer & Willoughby, 2017; Labrague et al., 2017; Thompson et al., 2018).

Currently, pandemic periods are traumatic and impact individuals and societal crises with stressful events (Baloran, 2020; Huang et al., 2020). We already have more than 3,535,000 deaths worldwide in the current pandemic generated by SARS-CoV-2 (Worldometers, 2021, May 28). Social, sanitary, and economic problems are affecting individual’s life around the world, and in front of those difficulties, developing mental health, including coping strategies, may be an essential psychological resource to overcome the challenges during this period (Amadasun, 2020; Chatterjee et al., 2020; Gao et al., 2020; Spoorthy et al., 2020).

General mental health indicators such as the presence of adaptative coping strategies may improve individuals’ enduring, resistance, and adaptation during their life (Ivaskevych et al., 2020; Shaw et al., 2020; Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2007), including pandemic context (Faulkner et al., 2020; Guan et al., 2020). On the other hand, maladaptive coping strategies may also appear in front of adversities, for example, (1) anxious behaviours (Daniels & Holtfreter, 2019), (2) escapism and avoidance behaviours (Melodia et al., 2020), (3) rationalisation cognitions (Moral-Jiménez & González-Sáez 2020), and (4) dissociation of their own emotions and cognitions (Guglielmucci et al., 2019). Individuals under extreme pressure may not accommodate contextual demands adequately, resulting in the activation of maladaptive coping strategies. When maladaptive coping is predominant, the individual usually exhibits psychopathological indicators such as stress, anxiety, and phobia (Di Nota et al., 2021; Orgilés et al., 2021; Peres et al., 2021; Shamblaw et al. 2021). Considering these assertions, we proposed the following hypotheses:

H1. There is divergent validity between maladaptive coping strategies and quality of work and life.

H2. There is convergent validity between maladaptive coping strategies and stress, phobia and anxiety.

Mainly, when adaptive coping strategies are developed, individuals usually (1) seek out information to solve problems (Barahmand et al., 2019), (2) create new abilities (Sospeter et al., 2020), (3) develop self-behavioural and emotional control (Ofori et al., 2018), (4) evaluate behavioural alternatives (Lenzen, 2017), and improve their quality of work and life (Du Plessis, 2021; Fathima et al., 2020). Generally, individuals can cope with daily stress and overcome phobias and personal anxieties when adaptive coping is operating (Di Nota et al., 2021; Shamblaw et al. 2021; Orgilés et al., 2021). Considering these assertions, we proposed the following hypotheses:

H3. There is convergent validity between adaptive coping strategies and quality of work and life.

H4. There is divergent validity between adaptive coping strategies and stress, phobia and anxiety.

In the current and post-pandemic context, it is critical to assure that individuals keep their adaptive coping strategies functional and minimise maladaptive coping strategies once stressors and uncertainties occur more frequently, demanding coping strategies to face daily life (Buheji et al., 2020a, b; Zack-Williams, 2020). Different studies showed that, even in stressful contexts, when adaptive coping is predominant, it is possible to obtain good health promotion and mental health fostering conditions for individuals (O'Connor et al., 2018; Ornek et al., 2020; Souza et al., 2021). All those indicators are essential to overcome the current COVID-19 pandemic problems once individuals with appropriate adaptive coping strategies improve their health-promoting self-care and supportive social behaviours (Wong et al., 2020; Kar et al., 2020; Buheji et al., 2020a, b).

Several instruments are available to assess coping in regular and specific contexts (Carver et al., 1989; Garcia et al., 2018; Luca et al., 2020; Pérez-Garín et al., 2020). Furthermore, there is a lack of instruments to assess coping strategies concisely during a pandemic context (Cortez & Antunes, 2022; Cortez et al., 2020). Focusing on coping strategy as an essential resource, we need to generate evidence for coping instruments that can contribute to mental health instrumentation for screening psychological conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic or others that may happen. During COVID-19, Pérez-Fuentes et al. (2021) proposed one instrument for assessing adaptability to change based on the emotional and cognitive dimensions. There are two factors (emotional adaptation and cognitive adaptation) that can be summed as a secondary factor of adaptability to change in their instrument.

We criticise the theoretical foundation of that instrument, considering that the content of the items does not fit with the authors’ interpretation of the internal structure. When we checked the items’ content, it is possible to identify emotional and cognitive content in both factors (Pérez-Fuentes et al., 2021), which may not explain the factorability in two factors. We hypothesised that the difference between the factors fits with coping strategies theorisation (Lazarus & Folkman, 1991; Taylor & Stanton, 2007; Holahan & Moos, 1987; Heffer & Willoughby, 2017; Labrague et al., 2017; Thompson et al., 2018), especially with the concept of adaptive and maladaptive coping (Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996).

The instrument has acceptable quality items content that perfectly fits with adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies, which may be the real explanation for the factorability of the instrument in two factors (Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996), despite the previous interpretation made by the authors (Pérez-Fuentes et al., 2021). As an alternative proposal, we retested their instrument’s factorability, offering coping strategies theorisation as a solid foundation to reinterpret the internal structure in the current study. Based on that perspective, our main objective was to analyse the internal structure, internal consistency, and convergent and divergent validity for the Coping Strategies Scale in a pandemic context.

Method

Participants

We included 211 economically active Brazilians with an average age of 37.07 (SD = 13.03). Most of them were women (72.98%), declared themselves as ‘white’ Latin Americans (74.88%), with higher education (55.50%), worked as technicians in their bachelor area (30.69%) or autonomously and informally (26.51%), 24.10% of the individuals received a health diagnosis associated with the pandemic, and 19.43% had a psychiatric diagnosis with previous pharmacological use. Approximately 24.88% experienced a wage reduction due to the pandemic, 61.61% declared to have adhered to social distancing, 39.81% lived directly with people suffering from the COVID-19 diagnosis, and 30.23% faced grief in the family or close friends due to the pandemic.

Focusing on participants’ self-perception of their mental health, 66.02% of the participants indicated phobia and avoidance of social situations, including their work, to fear becoming ill with COVID-19 during the pandemic. Nearly 38.75% reported feeling highly stressed about daily activities after the beginning of the pandemic. Approximately 36.84% stated that they were highly anxious with losses in their day-to-day duties due to the pandemic. Finally, 27.75% described losses in quality of life due to the pandemic, and 85.09% did not fully adapt to the new living and working conditions resulting from the pandemic.

Instruments

Coping Strategies Scale

A self-report instrument inspired by the Scale of adaptation to change (Peréz-Fuentez et al., 2021). The current Scale is composed of nine items, covering two factors (maladaptive coping — 4 items; adaptive coping — 5 items) that assess how much the individual demonstrates the ability to positive or negative cope with everyday stressful situations related to pandemic. The response scale was a five-point Likert type, ranging from ‘1 = Never’ to ‘5 = Always’. The psychometric properties of the scale are shown in the results of the current study.

Mental Health Self-Perception Questionnaire in Pandemic

A brief self-report questionnaire with four questions was prepared and based on specific literature (APA, 2013; Carver & Connor-Smith, 2010; Elizur & Shye, 1990) to describe the participants’ general mental health conditions. The following signs and symptoms include (a) social phobia, (b) episodic stress, (c) generalised anxiety, and (d) quality of work and life. The response scale consisted in two points (1 = Yes; 2 = No). The participant should mark the presence or absence of the symptom due to the pandemic, associated with impairments in daily life, social interactions, and work. Internal consistency evidence was adequate (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.62; McDonalds’ omega = 0.71).

Sociodemographic and Functional Questionnaire

A brief self-report questionnaire prepared by the researchers in which the participant should indicate (a) age, (b) gender, (c) ethnicity, (d) education, (e) professional nature of the performance, (f) previous mental health diagnosis and use of a psychopharmacological substance, (g) wage reduction in the pandemic, (h) living with people infected in the pandemic, and (j) experience of grief among friends and family due to the pandemic. The response format was open. The participant filled out the information in the corresponding field that we converted into numerical (time) and dichotomic (yes; no) data to describe the participants’ main characteristics.

Procedures

We adapted the instrument from English to Brazilian Portuguese. It followed the procedures described by Van de Vijver (2016), focusing on cultural adaptation and Brazil’s semantic and linguistic aspects. These procedures were (a) independent translation by two translators, (b) content analysis of the items by the Expert Committee to generate the synthesis version of the instrument, and (c) semantic analysis of the instrument by the target population in terms of item comprehensibility. Two cognitive interviews were conducted with the target population, focused on assessing the cognitive process considered throughout the instrument’s response (Nápoles-Springer et al., 2006).

All the procedures above proved to be adequate to individual’s comprehension (Beaton et al., 2000; Hubley & Zumbo, 2011), considering the emergency of proposing screening instruments for future pandemics to create information systems that rapidly respond to health emergencies and social and health crises (Agerfalk et al., 2020). Brazilian Institutional Ethics Committee (CAAE: 36991720.6.0000.5152) approved the project for execution. The recruitment for this research was online, using an unidentified hyperlink sent through the researchers’ social and institutional networks. The interface used to apply the instrument was digital. The average time of participation in the research was about 30 min for each participant.

Data Analysis

Data were analysed using the JASP 0.14.0 software (Love et al., 2019). We characterised the sample according to sociodemographic and functional aspects using descriptive statistics. KMO index (Kaiser Meyer Olkin) and Bartlett’s sphericity test were inspected to apply factor analysis to the data matrix (Hair et al., 2006). We used exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with simulation of the Mplus DWLS (diagonally weighted least squares) algorithm at JASP (Forero et al., 2009). Factor retention was made with parallel analysis, considering the theoretical indication of adaptive and maladaptive coping (Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996) and previous evidence for the instrument (Peréz-Fuentez et al., 2021). The internal consistency indexes employed were Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega (Dunn et al., 2014). We used Pearson’s correlation to verify the association between instrument factors and other variables to evaluate concurrently relationships in the nomological network of the measured attribute (Barrett et al., 1981).

Results

We tested the prior requisites for the use of factor analysis. We found KMO (Kaiser Meyer Olkin) index = 0.86. The Bartlett test obtained significant results (χ2 = 1210.97; df = 36; p =0.01). Both indicators allowed the use of factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis indicated one-factor retention with parallel analysis, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Internal structure evidence for the instrument
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In the use of confirmatory factor analysis, we modelled a restricted model structure with two factors that shown reasonable adjustment (χ2=67.55; df = 33; p=0.01; CFI = 0.98; TLI = 0.97; SRMR = 0.08). We also estimated a second-order factor for the two-factor structure using its factors. The general second-order factor obtained a negative second-order factorial loading with the first factor (λ = −0.698) and a positive second-order factorial loading with the second factor (λ = 0.674). The internal consistency for that second-order factor was adequate (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.879; McDonalds’ omega = 0.888) Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Second-order factorability for Coping Strategies Scale

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Correlations between coping factors and external variables were suitable. There is a positive correlation between adaptive coping and second-order coping factors (r = 0.827; p<0.01). Also, we found a negative correlation between maladaptive coping and adaptive coping (r = −0.430; p<0.01). The exact negative correlation also occurred between the maladaptive and second-order coping factors (r =−0.864; p<0.01).

Considering relations with other variables, we found adaptive coping presented negative correlation with phobia (r = −0.157; p<0.01), stress (r = −0.365; p<0.01), and anxiety (r = −0.366; p<0.01); and positive correlation with qualify of work and life (r = 0.325; p<0.01). Maladaptive coping presented positive correlation with phobia (r = 0.343; p<0.01), stress (r = 0.663; p<0.01) and anxiety (r = 0.689; p<0.01), and negative correlation with quality of work and life (r = −0.349; p<0.01). We presented all the correlations in Table 2.

Table 2 Correlations between coping factors and convergent and divergent validity with other variables
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Discussion

We analysed the internal structure, internal consistency, and convergent and divergent validity for the Coping Strategies Scale in the pandemic context. There is a robust internal structure considering the evidence generated in the current study. Convergent and divergent validity is also established once coping strategies factors have shown adequacy on correlations between coping factors and other mental health indicators such as stress, phobia, anxiety, and quality of work and life.

The first factor, named maladaptive coping strategies, indicates problematic behavioural, cognitive, and affective patterns that individuals may adopt when dealing with a pandemic context (Moral-Jiménez & González-Sáez, 2020). It includes feeling nervous, anxious, tense, and irritated with disruptive cognitions about the future in the current pandemic scenario (Daniels & Holtfreter, 2019; Guglielmucci et al., 2019). Maladaptive coping strategies usually include non-adaptive emotions and cognition that fit the factor’s content with previous literature indications (Coveney & Olver, 2017).

In the second-order factor, the negative relation of maladaptive coping is also indicated once maladaptive coping strategies lower individuals’ capacities to cope with adversity (Melodia et al., 2020). The negative correlation between maladaptive coping and quality of work and life confirms H1. Also, the positive correlation of maladaptive coping with stress, phobia, and anxiety indicators confirms H2 (Shamblaw et al., 2021; Orgilés et al., 2021).

The second factor, adaptive coping, represents individual cognitive and affective efforts to properly deal with adversity in the current pandemic context (Barahmand et al., 2019). It includes self-monitoring behaviour and emotions when dealing with problems, planning to respond adequately to adversities with self and contextual awareness to gather information, process, and act positively in the current pandemic circumstance (Lenzen, 2017).

Compared with the literature, the content of the adaptive coping factor is appropriate. It includes emotional and cognitive self-regulation, conscientious planning, and the decision to overcome situational and personal adversity (Ofori et al., 2018; Sospeter et al., 2020). The positive correlation between adaptive coping and quality of work and life confirms H3. The negative correlation between stress, phobia, anxiety indicators, and adaptive coping corroborates H4 (Di Nota et al., 2021; Shamblaw et al., 2021).

Considering the second-order factor, the positive relationship with the adaptive coping and negative association with the maladaptive coping showed that the second-order factor theorisation adjusts appropriately in the current internal structure compared to Pérez-Fuentes et al. (2021) previous internal structure. Considering the new evidence generated in the present study, the second-order factor might designate strategies that boost individuals’ capacities to cope with adversity fitting its definitions with core definitions from coping theorisation (Holahan & Moos, 1987; Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996). Focusing on that theorisation, individuals may use it to overcome difficulties to assess coping strategies during pandemics (Cortez et al., 2020).

In a general perspective, the higher the individual’s score on coping strategies, the more adaptive coping will be expressed. Also, lower expressions of maladaptive coping can be expected to improve individual regular life conditions to overcome difficulties in pandemic contexts (Heffer & Willoughby, 2017; Taylor & Stanton, 2007). It is also probable that individuals with higher scores on adaptive coping strategies will demonstrate low behaviours and cognitions associated with phobia, stress, and anxiety (Edraki et al., 2018; Ollendick et al., 2017).

When individuals can use adaptative coping strategies in their daily life, even if it is complex and stressful, psychopathological outcomes are less probable, fostering the importance of coping in the current pandemic context (Compas et al., 2017). Finally, a higher quality of life and work will be experienced for those with higher coping strategies (Fairfax et al., 2019; Luca et al., 2020; Zamanian et al., 2018). It demonstrates that part of our efforts to overcome pandemic issues may integrate adaptive coping development to reintegrate and keep people facing their daily lives and work with personal resources to bypass mental and contextual difficulties that intensified in the current pandemic (Kar et al., 2020).

We highlight the impact of our study; it may impact health promotion worldwide, offering a brief instrumental in reinforcing coping assessment during pandemics. Coping assessment is fundamental to identifying adaptive personal resources that promote protection and empowerment for individuals psychologically, focusing on overcoming current and post-pandemic issues. Our study’s limitation highlights the non-probabilistic and context-restricted sampling that needs to expand sociodemographic characteristics in other countries, considering its populational and cultural specificities. In the current proposal, we evidence the Coping Strategies Scale as a preeminent instrument to assess abilities to cope adaptively and maladaptively in daily life during pandemics, focusing on possible outcomes that may harm or improve individuals’ psychological state and quality of work and life.