[Reliability and validity of the Japanese version of the coping inventory for stressful situations (CISS): a contribution to the cross-cultural studies of coping].

OBJECTIVE: There has recently been a dramatic increase in the number of studies on coping behavior as an intervening variable between stress and health. Most of the available measures of coping are, however, psychometrically inadequate. We therefore decided to develop the Japanese version of the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) with special regards to its cross-cultural equivalence, reliability and validity. The CISS is a self-report measure of an individual's typical pattern of coping along three orthogonal dimensions of Task-, Emotion-, and Avoidance-oriented coping; its reliability and validity have been well studied in North America, where it was originally developed.

METHOD: We obtained the Japanese version of the CISS (J-CISS) by means of back-translation. In Study 1, we administered the J-CISS and the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) to 33 Japanese university students twice with an interval of four weeks. In Study 2,550 Japanese high school students completed the J-CISS and the Maudsley Personality Inventory.

RESULTS: The equivalence of the Japanese version with the original was ascertained by means of back-translation involving multiple, independent mental health professionals and by factor congruence between the two versions. A principal component factor analysis (Varimax rotation) of the Study 2 data allowed us to extract three factors, which were virtually identical to the original ones. The high corrected item-remainder correlations, internal consistency reliabilities and test-retest reliabilities all attested to the reliability of the J-CISS. In order to examine its content validity, we compared the J-CISS with two coping questionnaires that have been in use in Japan, and found that the J-CISS covered most of the coping styles in these two questionnaires. However, such coping styles as "giving up," "to lose is to win (a Japanese proverb)," "it is best to do nothing" were not included in the original CISS and hence in the J-CISS. The criterion validity of the J-CISS was examined both in terms of predictive validity and concurrent validity. In Study 1, those who scored below the cut-off of the GHQ at Time 1 but above the cut-off at Time 2 had significantly higher Emotion-oriented coping scores at Time 1 than those who remained below the cut-off of the GHQ at Times 1 and 2 (predictive validity). In Study 2, the J-CISS scales and the MPI scales showed theoretically predicted correlations (concurrent validity). The results of the factor analysis and the corrected item-remainder correlations were suggestive of high construct validity of the J-CISS. Moreover, the mean inter-item correlation was between .20 and .40 for each scale, indicating its homogeneity. Factor analysis of each scale revealed that each scale indeed contained only one factor. Correlations among the three scales of the J-CISS established that the three scales formed multi-dimensional measures of coping.

CONCLUSION: The results of our study indicate 1) that the obtained Japanese version of the CISS is to be regarded as final, 2) that coping styles can be measured in a consistent and reliable manner both in Japan and North America, and 3) that this cross-cultural equivalence as well as the other validity studies have further augmented the validity of the CISS itself.