Here you can find all the information regarding the construction and validation of the COPE 6. If you have any further questions or suggestions regarding the COPE 6, please feel free to contact us.
The validation of the COPE 6 was based on a sample of 961 informal caregivers. The participants had an average age of 62.10 years. 75.7 % of the participants were women. The sample had a high objective care burden of 8.85 hours of care per day in average.
The COPE 6 was developed and validated in 2026 by Lauer and colleagues. The goal was to develop a questionnaire that would assess coping strategies as economically and validly as possible. The scale was developed using a theory-based and deductive approach carried out by experts from the fields of psychology and medicine.
The final version of the COPE 6 includes the following items:
- I´ve been concentrating my efforts on doing something about the situation I´m in.
- I´ve been using alcohol or other drugs to make myself feel better.
- I´ve been getting emotional support from others.
- I´ve been giving up trying to deal with it.
- I´ve been getting comfort and understanding from someone.
- I´ve been trying to get advice or help from other people about what to do.
The COPE 6 can be downloaded here.
Item Analysis: The item difficulty of the “Functional Coping Strategies” subscale ranged from .46 to .52. The items in this subscale demonstrated high discriminatory power. The item difficulty of the “Dysfunctional Coping Strategies” subscale ranged from .12 to .35. Discriminatory power could not be established here.
Reliability: Cronbach’s alpha for the “Functional Coping Strategies” subscale was .71. The split-half reliability of the “Dysfunctional Coping Strategies” subscale yielded a Spearman-Brown coefficient of .16.
Validity: The validity of the questionnaire was tested and confirmed using five hypotheses. The specific hypotheses can be found in the validation study by Lauer and colleagues (2026).
Lauer, N., Graessel, E., Hinkl, P., Rohleder, N., & Pendergrass, A. (2026). Coping strategies in challenging situations among informal caregivers: validation of the newly developed six-item German short version of the Brief COPE Inventory (COPE 6). BMC psychology.
If you would like to validate the COPE 6 in other contexts or languages, please feel free to contact us. We would be happy to support you in your project!
Six-Item Short Version of the Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced (Brief COPE) Inventory (COPE 6)