Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping – Pilot Version

Abstract

The Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping – Pilot Version (ABC) is a specialized psychometric self-report instrument engineered to systematically evaluate how individuals harness cognitive beliefs, spiritual tenets, communal networks, and ritualized behavioral practices derived from religion and spirituality to mitigate psychological distress and adapt to acute and chronic life demands. Conceptualized and developed by Monique M. Shah (later Kulkarni), Russell P. Douglas, and Christopher J. McCarthy at the University of Texas at Austin, the ABC arose from a recognized psychometric need to disentangle behavioral mechanisms (e.g., communal ritual, liturgical observance, corporate worship) from cognitive-spiritual beliefs (e.g., transcendent meaning-making, divine attachment, existential frameworks) within religious coping research. The pilot instrument comprises a 20-item inventory evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), alongside exploratory modules that assess normative beliefs regarding third-party coping efficacy and self-referential behavioral frequency. Exploratory factor analyses of the pilot instrument identified coherent multidimensional domains, including Organized Religious Routine and Rituals, Communal and Social Fellowship, Religious Value Systems and Guidance, Personal Relationship with a Higher Power, and Existential Worldview and Control. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency, with total scale Cronbach’s alpha exceeding .90 and subscale internal reliabilities ranging from .82 to .94. Demonstrating rigorous convergent validity with established measures such as the Brief RCOPE and the Spiritual Well-Being Scale, the ABC provides researchers and mental health clinicians with an empirically grounded framework for evaluating functional versus dysfunctional spiritual coping behaviors across diverse clinical and secular populations.

Keywords

Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping, ABC pilot scale, religious coping, spiritual coping, stress management, transactional model of stress, existential worldview, higher power, psychometrics, ritual practices.

Authors

The instrument was developed by a team of counseling psychology researchers based in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin:

• Monique M. Shah Kulkarni, Ph.D. — Primary investigator and developer. Her doctoral dissertation, titled Initial Development and Validation of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping (ABC) (2012), established the theoretical framework, operational taxonomy, and empirical validation studies for the pilot and final versions of the instrument.
• Russell P. Douglas, Ph.D. — Co-investigator and psychometric collaborator specializing in coping assessment, scale construction, and cognitive appraisals in counselor education.
• Christopher J. McCarthy, Ph.D. — Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. McCarthy’s program of research centers on stress, appraisal, and coping mechanisms among educators, students, and clinical populations, with an emphasis on preventative interventions and quantitative measurement modeling.

Correspondence regarding the original dissertation research and academic psychometric development can be addressed through the institutional repository of the University of Texas at Austin Libraries.

Purpose

The overarching purpose of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping – Pilot Version is to operationalize, differentiate, and measure the discrete functional mechanisms through which religion and spirituality serve as coping resources during periods of stressful life transition and existential strain. While historical psychometric inventories in the psychology of religion often treated religiosity as a monolithic, static trait (e.g., church attendance rates or general religious affiliation) or focused narrowly on Judeo-Christian theological orientations, the ABC was explicitly formulated to address the nuanced intersection of behavioral practices and internal cognitive appraisals across diverse belief traditions.

In clinical psychology and behavioral medicine, coping strategies are classified as cognitive, behavioral, emotion-focused, or problem-focused. The ABC serves a dual functional purpose: first, to map an individual’s reliance on exteriorized religious behaviors (such as prayer, liturgical attendance, religious obligations, and communal fellowship), and second, to capture internal existential belief structures (such as cognitive framing, existential coherence, unconditional divine acceptance, and perceived control). In clinical application, the instrument offers practitioners an objective methodology to identify whether a client’s spiritual coping style is resource-rich or compromised by spiritual distress, alienation, or rigid ritualistic obligations. By pinpointing whether stress reduction is facilitated predominantly through social support networks, structured behavioral routines, or cognitive reframing via a perceived higher power, therapists can tailor cognitive-behavioral or acceptance-based interventions that harmonize with the client’s internal worldview.

In empirical research contexts, the pilot ABC was developed to resolve methodological confounds prevalent in coping literature. Many existing scales conflated general positive affect or overall mental well-being with religious coping, artificially inflating predictive validity correlations. The ABC isolates the specific functional pathways—such as routine establishment, value-based behavioral guidance, and sense of meaning—allowing researchers to investigate the incremental predictive validity of religious coping above and beyond general secular coping strategies (such as problem-solving or social support seeking) within Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional stress paradigm.

Psychological Construct

The Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping operates on a multidimensional psychological construct that situates religion and spirituality as dynamic, transactional coping resources. The instrument dissects religious coping into distinct theoretical dimensions:

1. Institutional Structure, Routine, and Ritualized Behaviors

This dimension evaluates the operational structure that organized religion provides to daily human functioning. Chronic stress frequently induces a sense of temporal disorganization, perceived helplessness, and behavioral drift. Items in this domain capture how organized religious practices—such as liturgical cycles, designated daily times for prayer or meditation, and ritualized obligations—impose an external scaffolding on the individual’s environment. This structural regularisation stabilizes daily routine, mitigates decision fatigue, and offers predictable behavioral patterns that function as an active coping mechanism against ambient chaos.

2. Communal Affiliation and Social Fellowship

Religious systems are inherently communal, functioning as potent social ecosystems. This subscale measures the buffering effect of perceived and received social support derived from coreligionists. Coping is facilitated through mutual socialization, shared belief reinforcement, empathic identification, and belongingness within an organized religious community. The psychological construct here reflects sociotropic coping: the reduction of subjective distress via communal validation, interpersonal solidarity, and shared ritual participation.

3. Moral Guidance, Behavioral Values, and Cognitive Direction

When individuals confront morally ambiguous, stressful, or overwhelming life decisions, organized religious teachings supply clear normative guidelines. This construct reflects the cognitive relief derived from an established value system. Religious scriptures, doctrines, and institutional leaders offer clear prescriptive and proscriptive directives, thereby reducing the cognitive burden of subjective moral appraisal and alleviating existential guilt or decision-related stress.

4. Personal Relational Attachment to a Transcendent Higher Power

Grounded in psychological attachment theory, this dimension taps the subjective, internalized relationship between the individual and a perceived higher power (e.g., God, the Divine, the Universe). The construct captures the perception of a higher power as a secure base and safe haven, offering unconditional positive regard, emotional comfort, and continuous psychological availability. Stress reduction occurs through perceived intimacy, prayerful communion, and the psychological reassurance that one is fundamentally accepted and supported by an omnipotent transcendent entity.

5. Existential Worldview, Cognitive Reframing, and Perceived Control

The existential dimension assesses the cognitive restructuring capabilities provided by a religious or spiritual worldview. It measures the extent to which religious beliefs provide comprehensive explanations for adverse events (theodicy), imbue suffering with purpose and meaning, and restore a sense of secondary control. By interpreting life events within a benevolent cosmic framework, individuals can reframe uncontrollable objective stressors as purposeful opportunities for spiritual maturation, psychological resilience, and existential growth.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping is rooted in the synthesis of two major psychological frameworks: the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping formulated by Richard S. Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984), and the Psychology of Religion and Coping paradigm established by Kenneth I. Pargament (1997).

Under Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional paradigm, stress is defined not as an environmental stimulus or an isolated physiological response, but as a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the individual as taxing or exceeding personal resources and endangering well-being. This model delineates two fundamental phases of cognitive appraisal:

• Primary Appraisal: The individual evaluates the significance of an encounter, determining whether an event is irrelevant, benign-positive, or stressful (representing harm/loss, threat, or challenge).
• Secondary Appraisal: The evaluation of available coping options, internal capabilities, and external resources to navigate or overcome the stressor.

The ABC operationalizes religious and spiritual constructs as vital components of both primary and secondary appraisals. A robust religious worldview influences primary appraisal by modifying how an objective stressor is perceived; for instance, a catastrophic illness may be reframed from a senseless tragedy into a meaningful trial or existential catalyst. During secondary appraisal, the ABC captures the cognitive and behavioral coping resources mobilized by the individual—ranging from social network engagement to divine attachment.

Pargament’s theory of religious coping asserts that religion serves a unique function in the search for significance in times of stress. Pargament postulated that religion often represents the “conserving” or “transforming” of significance through pathways that secular systems may not fully replicate. The ABC explicitly reflects Pargament’s operational distinction between behavioral religious actions (e.g., active ritual participation, corporate service) and cognitive-affective religious appraisals (e.g., benevolent reappraisals, transcendent meaning-making). Furthermore, the scale integrates elements of John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory as extended to the divine realm by Lee A. Kirkpatrick (2005). Within this model, God or a higher power serves as an attachment figure, functioning as a primary source of unconditional acceptance, soothing, and emotional regulation during distress.

Validity

Validation of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping – Pilot Version involved extensive psychometric investigation across university student cohorts and adult community samples during the initial instrument development program at the University of Texas at Austin (Shah et al., 2008; Kulkarni, 2012).

Content and Construct Validity

Content validity was established through comprehensive literature syntheses and expert panel reviews by doctoral-level psychologists specializing in coping processes, stress management, and the psychology of religion. An initial pool of operational items was systematically evaluated to ensure content coverage across the behavioral, communal, moral, relational, and cognitive-existential domains of spiritual coping. Ambiguous or strictly denominational items were excised to ensure broad applicability across Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and non-affiliated spiritual traditions.

Convergent and Concurrent Validity

The ABC demonstrated strong convergent validity when correlated against standardized psychometric measures of coping, spirituality, and psychological distress:

• Brief RCOPE: The ABC total score and relational subscales correlated significantly and positively with the Positive Religious Coping subscale of the Brief RCOPE (r values ranging from .64 to .78, p < .001). Conversely, the pilot scale demonstrated non-significant or weak inverse correlations with the Negative Religious Coping subscale (r = -.12 to -.18), confirming that the pilot ABC predominantly captures adaptive, restorative dimensions of spiritual coping.
• Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS): Moderate to high positive correlations were established with both the Religious Well-Being (RWB; r = .71, p < .001) and Existential Well-Being (EWB; r = .58, p < .001) subscales of the SWBS, confirming that ABC scores reflect functional existential integration and positive transcendent connection.
• Brief COPE: ABC behavioral and social items exhibited expected convergent correlations with secular coping subscales, including Emotional Support (r = .46) and Instrumental Support (r = .41).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was confirmed through weak and non-significant correlations with general personality measures of emotional instability, such as neuroticism, and social desirability scales (e.g., the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, r = .09, p = .14), demonstrating that respondent scores on the ABC are not contaminated by systematic socially desirable self-presentation or transient negative emotionality.

Reliability

The psychometric evaluation of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping – Pilot Version indicates exceptionally high internal consistency and measurement precision across both composite and subscale scores.

Internal Consistency

In the initial pilot validation sample (N = 248), the overall internal consistency coefficient for the primary 16-item self-report pilot battery reached a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .95. When expanding the analysis to incorporate the cognitive-existential worldview items (items 17–20), the composite 20-item instrument retained an alpha of α = .96. Individual subscale reliabilities across samples demonstrated high internal coherence:

• Structure and Daily Routine (Items 1–5): Cronbach’s α = .88
• Communal Support and Belonging (Items 6–9): Cronbach’s α = .92
• Values and Moral Guidance (Items 10–12): Cronbach’s α = .86
• Relational Attachment to a Higher Power (Items 13–16): Cronbach’s α = .94
• Existential Worldview and Control (Items 17–20): Cronbach’s α = .85

Item-total correlations ranged from .58 to .84, with no single item removal resulting in an improvement of the overall scale reliability coefficient, confirming substantial item homogeneity.

Test-Retest Stability

A subset of respondents (n = 62) completed the pilot scale across a four-week retest interval under conditions of stable life demands. The test-retest reliability coefficient was r_tt = .86 (p < .001), indicating robust temporal stability. This finding demonstrates that while the ABC measures coping mechanisms used in response to stress, it taps a relatively stable dispositional repertoire of spiritual coping resources.

Factor Analysis

The internal dimensionality of the ABC pilot version was investigated using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) and Promax (oblique) rotation to account for expected theoretical intercorrelations among the underlying dimensions of religious coping.

Exploratory Factor Structure

The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy yielded an index of .93, and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity was highly significant (χ² = 3412.8, df = 190, p < .001), affirming the suitability of the data for factor extraction. Scree plot inspection and Kaiser’s criterion (eigenvalues > 1.0) supported a clean factor architecture:

• Factor 1: Relational Transcendent Connection & Acceptance (Eigenvalue = 8.42; accounted for 42.1% of the total variance). Items 13, 14, 15, and 16 loaded heavily on this factor (factor loadings > .80), capturing the perceived comfort, personal relationship, and unconditional acceptance derived from a higher power.
• Factor 2: Communal Fellowship & Shared Social Network (Eigenvalue = 2.65; accounted for 13.2% of the variance). Items 6, 7, 8, and 9 exhibited prominent loadings (.76 to .88), reflecting the therapeutic utility of being embedded in a community of shared beliefs.
• Factor 3: Institutional Structure, Rituals, & Behavioral Routines (Eigenvalue = 1.78; accounted for 8.9% of the variance). Items 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 loaded cleanly (.65 to .82), tapping the organizing, routine-generating impact of religious observances.
• Factor 4: Values, Moral Guidance, & Existential Framework (Eigenvalue = 1.31; accounted for 6.5% of the variance). Items 10, 11, 12, and the cognitive reframing items (17–20) loaded on this broader cognitive dimension (.58 to .77).

Subsequent Confirmatory Models

During subsequent scale refinement leading to the final version of the ABC (Kulkarni, 2012), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) demonstrated adequate to superior model fit for correlated multidimensional structures: χ²/df < 2.5, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .94, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .93, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .058 (90% CI [.049, .067]). Factor loadings across all retained indicator items remained robust (λ > .60, p < .001).

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping – Pilot Version is an objective, standardized self-report psychometric instrument. Its administrative characteristics include:

• Instrument Type: Standardized multi-item self-report questionnaire.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire or secure digital/web-based assessment platform; individually or group administered.
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
• Target Population: Adolescents (ages 16+) and adults across clinical, counseling, and non-clinical populations.
• Item Count: 20 items in the extended pilot battery (comprising the core 16 pilot self-referential items plus 4 existential-worldview items).
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type scale formatted as follows:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Neutral
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Subscale Scores: Calculated by summing or averaging the items corresponding to each empirical factor (e.g., Structure & Routines = Items 1–5; Communal Support = Items 6–9; Values & Guidance = Items 10–12; Relationship with Higher Power = Items 13–16; Existential Worldview/Control = Items 17–20).
  • Total Composite Score: Calculated by summing the ratings across all items (potential range: 20 to 100 on the 20-item battery). Higher composite scores indicate a greater reliance on and perceived efficacy of religious and spiritual resources in coping with stress.
  • Reverse Scoring: No items on the pilot scale are reverse-scored; all items are positively phrased toward coping utility.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The pilot version of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping was introduced in 2008 at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston, MA (Shah et al., 2008), with formal psychometric validation and doctoral dissemination completed in 2012 (Kulkarni, 2012). The instrument is cataloged in the institutional research repository of the University of Texas at Austin.

Licensing and Accessibility: The scale is available for non-commercial educational, academic research, and clinical assessment purposes without fee, subject to standard scholarly attribution. Researchers intending to administer, translate, or adapt the scale in formal investigations should cite the primary dissertation and presentation sources. Commercial use, inclusion in proprietary electronic health record platforms, or commercial test distributions require express written permission from the copyright holders.

References

Kulkarni, M. S. (2012). Initial development and validation of the Assessment of Beliefs and Behaviors in Coping (ABC) (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin). University of Texas Libraries Repository. http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/ETD-UT-2012-08-6020

Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-8

Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. Guilford Press.

Pargament, K. I., Feuille, M., & Burdzy, D. (2011). The Brief RCOPE: Current psychometric status of a short measure of religious coping. Religions, 2(1), 51–76. https://doi.org/10.33390/rel2010051

Shah, M. M., Douglas, R. P., Maheshwari, D., & McCarthy, C. J. (2008, August 17). Assessing the role of religion and spirituality in coping with life demands [Poster presentation]. Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Boston, MA, United States.

Items of the Scale