Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experience (A-COPE)

Abstract

The Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experience (A-COPE) is a widely recognized 54-item self-report psychometric instrument designed to identify the behaviors, cognitive strategies, and behavioral patterns that adolescents utilize to manage stressful life events, developmental transitions, and everyday challenges. Developed by family social scientists Hamilton I. McCubbin and Joan M. Patterson in the 1980s as an extension of the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation, the A-COPE captures multidimensional coping responses across biological, psychological, and social systems. The scale operationalizes coping across 12 empirically derived factors: Ventilating Feelings, Seeking Diversions, Developing Self-Reliance and Optimism, Developing Social Support, Solving Family Problems, Avoiding Family Problems, Seeking Spiritual Support, Investing in Close Friends, Seeking Professional Support, Engaging in Demanding Activities, Being Humorous, and Relaxing. Respondents rate each behavior on a 5-point Likert-type scale reflecting frequency of utilization (1 = Never to 5 = Most of the time). The instrument exhibits robust psychometric properties across diverse adolescent populations, demonstrating internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) ranging from .60 to .85 across subscales and strong test-retest reliability across multi-week intervals. Construct, convergent, and discriminant validities have been substantiated through significant correlations with adolescent psychological well-being, depressive symptomatology, risk behaviors (e.g., substance abuse, delinquency), family climate, and academic achievement. The A-COPE remains an invaluable measurement tool for clinical psychologists, developmental researchers, school counselors, and family therapists striving to map adolescent resilience trajectories and implement targeted interventions.

Keywords

Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experience, A-COPE, adolescent coping strategies, adolescent stress management, psychometrics, factor analysis, resiliency model, family stress theory, developmental psychopathology, problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, adolescent mental health

Authors

The Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experience (A-COPE) was constructed by Joan M. Patterson, Ph.D., and Hamilton I. McCubbin, Ph.D. Both investigators are internationally recognized figures in developmental psychology, family sociology, and the study of stress, adaptation, and systemic resilience.

• Hamilton I. McCubbin, Ph.D.: Emeritus Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and former Dean of the School of Human Ecology. McCubbin formulated foundational paradigms in family research, including the Double ABCX Model and the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation. His scholarly output encompasses dozens of standardized clinical measurement instruments designed to assess family vulnerabilities, strengths, and coping capacities.
• Joan M. Patterson, Ph.D.: Professor Emerita in the Department of Pediatrics and the Center for Children with Special Health Care Needs at the University of Minnesota. Patterson has published extensively on chronic illness in youth, adolescent coping behaviors, and the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response (FAAR) model. Her research elucidates how contextual systemic variables and internal cognitive-behavioral processes intersect to foster resilience during developmental transitions.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experience (A-COPE) is to systematically identify, categorize, and quantify the specific behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms employed by youth aged approximately 11 to 18 when encountering tension, hardship, and emotional turmoil. Prior to the construction of the A-COPE, the majority of coping inventories were developed and normed on adult clinical or occupational cohorts, failing to account for the unique developmental imperatives of adolescence. Adolescence is characterized by accelerated neurobiological maturation, renegotiation of familial authority, establishment of peer intimacy, emergent sexual identity, and elevated vulnerability to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. The A-COPE was specifically tailored to reflect these developmental realities by including coping behaviors rooted in adolescent lifestyle contexts—such as peer interactions, media consumption, academic navigation, substance experimentation, and parent-adolescent negotiation.

In clinical practice, the A-COPE serves as an assessment battery for identifying both functional (e.g., developing self-reliance, seeking social support, problem-solving with family) and potentially maladaptive or high-risk coping strategies (e.g., using unprescribed drugs, consuming alcohol, smoking, aggressive verbal ventilation, social withdrawal). By evaluating an adolescent’s coping profile, clinical psychologists, school social workers, and pediatricians can design psychoeducational programs, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) modules, and family systems interventions tailored to replace destructive behavioral releases with adaptive cognitive-restructuring and emotion-regulation skills.

In research domains, the instrument functions as an empirical framework to examine the interplay between chronic stressors (e.g., socio-economic deprivation, parental divorce, chronic illness) and developmental outcomes. It enables researchers to test moderation and mediation models of stress buffering, evaluate the efficacy of school-based stress-inoculation programs, and explore cross-cultural variations in how youth navigate ecological stressors.

Psychological Construct

The central psychological construct measured by the A-COPE is adolescent coping, defined conceptually as an evolving repertoire of overt behavioral responses and internal cognitive strategies utilized to prevent, manage, alleviate, or tolerate emotional tension and perceived environmental demands. Rather than conceptualizing coping solely as an immutable personality trait, Patterson and McCubbin operationalized coping as a behavioral orientation consisting of distinct coping patterns. The 54 items coalesce into 12 core dimensions:

1. Ventilating Feelings

This dimension captures the externalized, emotionally dysregulated discharge of pent-up anger, frustration, and psychological tension. Behaviors loading on this factor include yelling at people, swearing, blaming others for personal difficulties, and saying mean or sarcastic things. While transient venting may reduce subjective arousal, chronic ventilation in the absence of constructive problem resolution is frequently linked with externalizing disorders, interpersonal friction, and peer rejection.

2. Seeking Diversions

This subscale encompasses behavioral strategies oriented around cognitive distraction and self-soothing activities. Adolescents engage in non-demanding, leisure-based behaviors to temporarily distance themselves from ongoing stressors. Specific manifestations include reading, listening to music, going shopping to buy items of personal interest, watching television, attending movies, and engaging in personal hobbies or gaming.

3. Developing Self-Reliance and Optimism

Reflecting cognitive mastery, internal locus of control, and positive cognitive reappraisal, this factor measures youth initiatives to solve problems independently while preserving a hopeful psychological outlook. Behaviors include organizing personal responsibilities, seeking autonomous resolutions to conflicts, focusing on positive aspects of one’s life, and striving for self-improvement (e.g., improving academic grades or physical fitness).

4. Developing Social Support

This interpersonal dimension involves reciprocal social interactions that enhance social connectedness and belonging. It captures efforts to seek guidance from trusted institutional adults (e.g., school counselors, teachers), offering help to peers with their dilemmas, apologizing to repair damaged relationships, and cultivating new friendships.

5. Solving Family Problems

A systemic coping dimension focusing on the parent-adolescent and family subsystem. It measures constructive engagement within the domestic unit, including reasoning with parents to achieve compromise, talking through emotional distress with mothers, fathers, or siblings, adhering to familial expectations, and participating in shared family activities.

6. Avoiding Family Problems

In direct contrast to family problem solving, this subscale captures flight-based coping mechanisms wherein the adolescent physically or psychologically disengages from familial stress. Manifested by staying away from home as much as possible and minimizing the perceived severity of familial dilemmas (“telling yourself the problem is not important”), this pattern often signals domestic dysfunction, high familial conflict, or emotional estrangement.

7. Seeking Spiritual Support

This subscale assesses the utilization of religious, transpersonal, and faith-based practices to derive comfort, existential meaning, and emotional solace during times of distress. It includes attending religious services, praying, and seeking counsel from spiritual leaders such as ministers, priests, or rabbis.

8. Investing in Close Friends

Centering on adolescent dyadic intimacy, this pattern captures the preferential reliance on romantic partners or close peer confidants for emotional validation. It reflects developmental shifts away from parental dependence toward peer-oriented attachment systems, manifested by spending intensive time with a romantic partner and seeking closeness with trusted friends.

9. Seeking Professional Support

This factor evaluates formal help-seeking behaviors directed toward licensed healthcare and mental health practitioners. It differentiates itself from general social support by measuring engagement with professional psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, or physicians, including utilizing prescribed pharmacological interventions to manage acute distress.

10. Engaging in Demanding Activities

Characterized by goal-directed sublimation and behavioral activation, this coping dimension involves channeling emotional energy and anxiety into structured, effortful pursuits. Behaviors include working rigorously on school projects, securing employment or intensifying work hours, and participating heavily in extracurricular school activities.

11. Being Humorous

This dimension operationalizes humor as a mature cognitive defense and social lubricant. Adolescents utilize humor to reframe threatening realities, defuse acute social tensions, and maintain psychological perspective by intentionally joking, teasing lightheartedly, and refusing to succumb to overwhelming seriousness.

12. Relaxing

This subscale captures biological and somatic mechanisms of tension reduction, including eating, resting, sleeping, and releasing physical tension through exercise or strenuous activities.

Theoretical Framework

The A-COPE is anchored within two primary theoretical traditions: the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping formulated by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984), and the systemic Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation (an evolution of the Double ABCX Model) synthesized by McCubbin and Patterson (1983).

Lazarus and Folkman posited that psychological stress arises when an environmental demand is appraised as exceeding an individual’s internal and external resources. Coping consists of cognitive and behavioral efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate these demands. The Transactional Model conceptualizes coping across two broad functional modalities: problem-focused coping (targeting the causal environmental stressor directly) and emotion-focused coping (regulating emotional distress provoked by the stressor). The A-COPE broadens this binary classification by addressing the nuanced ecology of adolescence, demonstrating that adolescent coping strategies are rarely purely cognitive; they are deeply behavioral, social, systemic, and relational.

Simultaneously, Patterson and McCubbin integrated family systems theory through the Double ABCX and FAAR models. In this conceptualization, family vulnerability and adolescent maladjustment are products of cumulative stressors (the pile-up of demands, factor aA), interacting with family adaptive resources (factor bB), the cognitive appraisal of the situation (factor cC), leading to either crisis/maladaptation or successful adaptation/resilience (factor xX). The adolescent is viewed not as an isolated organism, but as an interdependent node within the family matrix. Consequently, adolescent coping orientations represent critical systemic mediators: when an adolescent relies heavily on coping mechanisms that reinforce familial cohesion (e.g., Solving Family Problems), family resilience is fortified. Conversely, reliance on avoidant or antagonistic coping (e.g., Avoiding Family Problems, Ventilating Feelings) can trigger escalating circular conflicts, depleting familial adaptive resources.

Validity

Extensive empirical investigations have evaluated the construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the A-COPE across diverse developmental, clinical, and multicultural samples.

Construct Validity

Construct validity was initially established through comprehensive exploratory factor analyses conducted on large normative cohorts of high school adolescents across the United States. Patterson and McCubbin (1987) demonstrated that the 12 extracted factors accounted for the majority of shared variance among the 54 items, with item loadings demonstrating distinct structural independence. Subsequent studies across varied demographic groups (e.g., Copeland & Hess, 1995) verified that the underlying multidimensional constructs maintain conceptual stability across age brackets, ethnic backgrounds, and gender cohorts.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been repeatedly demonstrated through significant correlations between A-COPE subscales and established measures of adolescent adjustment, self-esteem, family functioning, and pathology:

• Self-Reliance and Optimism: Positively correlated with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale ($r = .42$ to $.56, p < .001$) and generalized self-efficacy indices.
• Ventilating Feelings: Strongly correlated with externalizing behavioral scales, trait anger inventories, and school disciplinary referrals ($r = .38$ to $.51, p < .01$).
• Solving Family Problems: Correlates positively with the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES III) family cohesion dimension ($r = .45, p < .001$).
• Avoidant and Substance-Related Items: Correlate significantly with the Youth Self-Report (YSR) rule-breaking and aggressive behavior syndromes ($p < .001$).

Discriminant and Predictive Validity

The A-COPE demonstrates pronounced discriminant validity by differentiating between non-clinical community youth and clinical adolescents presenting with major depressive disorder, conduct disorder, or substance abuse. Longitudinal investigations reveal that youth exhibiting elevated baseline scores on Ventilating Feelings, Avoiding Family Problems, and substance-oriented behaviors (items 24, 42, 46) exhibit significantly elevated rates of academic underachievement, school dropout, and juvenile justice involvement over 2- to 4-year follow-up intervals, establishing high predictive utility.

Reliability

The reliability of the A-COPE has been scrutinized across internal consistency metrics, test-retest stability coefficients, and split-half reliability estimates.

Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha)

In the seminal validation sample of 467 adolescents (Patterson & McCubbin, 1987), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the 12 subscales exhibited moderate to high internal consistency, reflecting the behavioral breadth of individual coping dimensions:

• Ventilating Feelings: $\alpha = .75$
• Seeking Diversions: $\alpha = .72$
• Developing Self-Reliance and Optimism: $\alpha = .69$
• Developing Social Support: $\alpha = .75$
• Solving Family Problems: $\alpha = .71$
• Avoiding Family Problems: $\alpha = .60$
• Seeking Spiritual Support: $\alpha = .85$
• Investing in Close Friends: $\alpha = .76$
• Seeking Professional Support: $\alpha = .60$
• Engaging in Demanding Activities: $\alpha = .68$
• Being Humorous: $\alpha = .72$
• Relaxing: $\alpha = .62$

Subsequent psychometric investigations (e.g., Copeland & Hess, 1995; Plancherel et al., 1998) reported comparable composite reliability figures, with broad-band aggregate scores (e.g., total active coping vs. total avoidant coping) consistently demonstrating alphas surpassing $.80$.

Test-Retest Reliability

Temporal stability evaluations across 2- to 4-week test-retest intervals have yielded stability coefficients ranging from $r = .65$ to $r = .83$, indicating that while coping behaviors remain responsive to changing situational stressors, individual coping orientations function with relative stylistic stability over time.

Factor Analysis

The structural topology of the A-COPE was developed using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). In the baseline instrument calibration, Patterson and McCubbin subjected the 54 behavioral statements to principal components analysis followed by orthogonal Varimax rotation.

EFA Extraction and Factor Retention

Extraction criteria were governed by Kaiser’s eigenvalue-greater-than-one rule ($lambda > 1.0$) combined with Cattell’s scree test examination. The 12 identified factors accounted for approximately 60.1% of the total cumulative variance. Items were retained on specific factors if they satisfied a minimum salient factor loading criterion of $ge .35$ on their primary dimension, with minimal cross-loadings ($le .25$) on secondary factors.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

Contemporary psychometric evaluations employing Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have tested both the original 12-factor first-order structure and hierarchical second-order models (clustering subscales into broader latent domains such as Active/Problem-Focused Coping, Interpersonal Coping, and Avoidant/Dysfunctional Coping). Typical fit indices reported across adolescent cohorts demonstrate acceptable to good model fit:

• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio ($\chi^2/df$): $1.85 – 2.40$ (below the conservative $3.0$ threshold)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.048 – .058$ ($90% \text{ CI } [.043, .063]$)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.91 – .94$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.90 – .93$
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.052 – .061$

These fit indices substantiate the structural integrity and replicability of the 12-factor dimensional architecture across independent empirical investigations.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experience (A-COPE) is a standardized self-report paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire.

• Target Population: Adolescents aged 11 to 18 (grades 6 through 12).
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 20 minutes.
• Item Count: 54 individual behavioral statements.
• Response Format: 5-point Likert frequency scale:
  • 1 = Never
  • 2 = Hardly ever
  • 3 = Sometimes
  • 4 = Often
  • 5 = Most of the time
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Subscale raw scores are derived by calculating the mean or sum of the items assigned to each respective factor.
  • Higher subscale scores signify higher utilization frequency of that particular coping orientation.
  • Reverse-Scoring: Items 7, 8, 19, 24, 26, 28, 42, 46, and 49 are designated as reverse-scored items when computing total global adaptive coping indices. However, when examining specific localized risk profiles (e.g., the Ventilating Feelings subscale or substance involvement indices), clinical researchers typically retain direct item scoring ($1$ to $5$) to directly quantify maladaptive behavioral intensity.
• Subscale Item Composition:
  • Ventilating feelings: Items 19, 22, 26, 28, 49, 51
  • Seeking diversions: Items 2, 5, 11, 17, 33, 37, 43, 53
  • Developing self-reliance and optimism: Items 13, 15, 25, 32, 45, 47
  • Developing social support: Items 4, 6, 10, 18, 30, 35
  • Solving family problems: Items 1, 12, 31, 39, 41, 50
  • Avoiding family problems: Items 8, 36
  • Seeking spiritual support: Items 21, 23, 44
  • Investing in close friends: Items 16, 29
  • Seeking professional support: Items 9, 34
  • Engaging in demanding activities: Items 27, 40, 54
  • Being humorous: Items 3, 20
  • Relaxing: Items 7, 14, 48

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The A-COPE was developed in 1983 and formally published in scholarly journals and assessment sourcebooks in 1987 by Joan M. Patterson and Hamilton I. McCubbin. The instrument is part of the McCubbin Family Resilience Collection developed through the Family Stress, Coping and Health Project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The scale is widely reproduced for educational and non-commercial research purposes in volumes such as Measures for Clinical Practice and Research: A Sourcebook (Fischer & Corcoran, 2007, Oxford University Press). Academic researchers and graduate students can typically access and administer the instrument for thesis, dissertation, and non-funded empirical projects without licensing fees, provided proper bibliographic attribution is maintained. For commercial deployments, health system integration, or clinical trial batteries, permission should be secured through the copyright holders or designated institutional repositories (such as the McCubbin Resilience project materials archive).

References

Chapman, P. L., & Mullis, R. L. (1999). Adolescent coping strategies and self-esteem. Child Study Journal, 29(1), 69–77.

Copeland, E. P., & Hess, R. S. (1995). Differences in young adolescents’ coping strategies based on gender and ethnicity. Journal of Early Adolescence, 15(2), 203–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431695015002002

Fischer, J., & Corcoran, K. J. (2007). Measures for clinical practice and research: A sourcebook (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 423–426). Oxford University Press.

Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company.

McCubbin, H. I., & Patterson, J. M. (1983). The family stress process: The double ABCX model of adjustment and adaptation. Marriage & Family Review, 6(1-2), 7–37. https://doi.org/10.1300/J002v06n01_02

Patterson, J. M., & McCubbin, H. I. (1987). Adolescent coping style and behaviors: Conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Adolescence, 10(2), 163–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/0140-1971(87)90005-6

Plancherel, B., Bolognini, M., & Halfon, O. (1998). Coping strategies in early and mid-adolescence: Differences according to age and gender in a community sample. European Psychologist, 3(3), 192–201. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040.3.3.192

Spirito, A., Stark, L. J., & Williams, C. (1988). Development of a brief coping checklist for use with pediatric populations. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 13(4), 555–574. https://doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/13.4.555

Vliem, S. J. (2009). Adolescent coping and family functioning in the family of a child with autism (Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan). ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Items of the Scale