Process / pipelinereligious coping strategies

Brief RCOPE Religious Coping Scale

The Brief RCOPE, developed by Pargament and colleagues (1998), is a 14-item measure that distinguishes between positive and negative religious coping strategies that individuals employ when facing major life stressors. Derived from the longer 105-item RCOPE, the Brief RCOPE captures how people use faith, prayer, spiritual reframing, and community support to manage illness, loss, and adversity, while also identifying religiously-based distress responses (e.g., spiritual anger, perception of abandonment by God). It has become a standard measure in health psychology, particularly in research on coping with serious illness, grief, and trauma.

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Sources

  1. Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. (1998). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(4), 710–724. DOI: 10.2307/1388152
  2. Pargament, K. I., Feuille, J., & Burdzy, D. (2011). The Brief RCOPE: Current psychometric status of a short measure of religious coping. Religions, 2(1), 51–76. DOI: 10.3390/religions2010051

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Referenced by

ScholarGateBrief RCOPE (Brief RCOPE Religious Coping Scale). Retrieved 2026-06-04 from https://scholargate.app/en/psychology-of-religion/brief-religious-coping-scale