Mohammad Khodayarifard; Saeed Akbari-Zardkhaneh
Abstract
Historically, psychologists have been interested in categorizing and measurement of coping styles. Moreover, development of culture-specific measures has been neglected in the coping literature. The present study is intended to develop and validate a parsimonious and broad measure of coping style in ...
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Historically, psychologists have been interested in categorizing and measurement of coping styles. Moreover, development of culture-specific measures has been neglected in the coping literature. The present study is intended to develop and validate a parsimonious and broad measure of coping style in Iran. An item pool of 80 items was administered on a random sample of 911 university students in ten groups. A principled components analysis was performed on a subsample and a confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the remaining subsample. Twelve concurrent measures were used to ensure concurrent validity. A principled components analysis suggested a nine-factor solution. A confirmatory factor analysis on a distinct subsample confirmed the nine-factor structure. Subscales were labeled as turning to religion, procrastination, positivity, self-blame, avoidance, seeking social support, problem solving, wishful thinking, and passivity. All subscales were significantly correlated with theoretically related constructs. Alpha coefficients of the subscales ranged from 0.77 (problem solving) to 0.92 (turning to religion). The present study developed and validated the 45-item Iranian Coping Style Scale (ICSS) with nine subscales. Therefore, ICSS may be used as a reliable and valid measure of coping styles in research and clinical settings.
Reza Kormi-Nouri
Abstract
This review article consists of two studies about well-being and positive and negative emotions in two different cultures of Iran and Sweden as markers of collectivistic and individualistic cultures, respectively. Study 1 compared Iranian and Swedish undergraduate students with new measurements of well-being ...
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This review article consists of two studies about well-being and positive and negative emotions in two different cultures of Iran and Sweden as markers of collectivistic and individualistic cultures, respectively. Study 1 compared Iranian and Swedish undergraduate students with new measurements of well-being distinguishing between cognitive and emotional components (Diener et al., 2010). Whereas there was no difference between the two cultures in cognitive component of well-being, there were significant differences between the two cultures in emotional components. Iranian students reported more negative emotions while Swedish students reported more positive emotions. Furthermore, whereas, in Iranian population, negative emotions more strongly predicted their well-being, positive emotions more strongly predicted well-being in the Swedish population. In Study 2, the same measurements of well-being and positive and negative emotions were used among Iranian and Swedish infertile women who were in an unpleasant situation and experience a significant amount of stress and negative emotions. The results of this study also showed no difference between the two cultures with respect to cognitive component of well-being. There were again cultural differences in emotional component. Infertile Swedish women reported higher levels of positive and negative emotions than infertile Iranian women. In both infertile populations, the most predictive affect with regard to flourishing was the balance affect. It was concluded that, under a stressful and unpleasant situation like infertility compared to a normal situation (such as university student populations), the same pattern of distinction between cognitive and emotional components of well-being can be still observable. However, negative emotions can act differently at cultural level: they become more noticeable in the Swedish population than in the Iranian population. The results are discussed with respect to individualistic-collectivistic dimension.
