Validity Evidence for the Preventive Resources Inventory: A Measure of Stress Prevention

• In Event: 35.079 - Conceptualizing and Researching Stress in Educational Settings

Abstract

The Preventive Resources Inventory (PRI; McCarthy, Lambert, Beard, & Dematatis, 2002) is used to measure preventive coping resources. Lambert et al (2006) offered the following description: Perceived Control measures the belief that one can cope with life demands and manage situations that could become stressful; Maintaining Perspective assesses attitudes and beliefs consistent with preventing stress; Social Resourcefulness measures the ability to access a social network as a buffer against life demands; and Scanning measures one’s perceived ability to recognize, anticipate, and plan for demands. The Self-Acceptance scale measures the ability to accept and overcome shortcomings, imperfections, and limitations in dealing with demanding life situations.

An examination of current literature identified measures of stress prevention constructs that are similar to the PRI scales. These measures were used to investigate the validity of the PRI by examining the correlations between PRI scale scores and measures of similar constructs.

Personal Control Subscale of Spheres of Control Scale (SOC; Paulhus & Christie, 1981) is a 30-item scale designed to measure three components of perceived control: personal control, interpersonal control, and sociopolitical control (Paulhus & Christie, 1981).

Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI; Dennis & Vander Wal, 2010) is a 20-item self-report index designed to assess adaptive thinking by measuring an individual’s tendency to view difficult situations as controllable (Dennis & Vander Wal, 2010).

Acceptance and Action Questionnaire – II (AAQ; Bond et al., 2010) is a 10-item scale with a mean alpha coefficient is .84 and test-retest reliability ranging from .81 to .79. This measure assesses acceptance of stressful emotions and cognitions.

Proactive Coping Inventory (Greenglass et al. 1999) contains the Proactive Coping Scale (PCS) which focuses on goal setting and initiative taking behaviors and attitudes as coping tools, and the Emotional Support Seeking Scale (ESS) which captures emotional support received from relationships when dealing with stress.

Shortened Version of The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MC) (Straham & Gerbasi, 1972) is used to assess the social desirability of a participant’s responding (Marlowe & Crowne, 1960). The shortened scale used in this study includes 20 true-false items.

Participants included 248 students from the student subject pool at a large research university.

We hypothesized that scores from the MC would not be correlated with any of the PRI scale scores. We further hypothesized that the highest correlation coefficients within a Multi-trait Multi-method matrix for four of the five PRI scale scores would describe the relationships with scores from the PCS and AAQ. Finally, we expected the highest correlation coefficients with the scores from the Social Resourcefulness scale would describe relationships with the ESS scores.

The hypotheses were confirmed. The correlations between the PRI scale scores and the MC were small, ranging from r = -.056 to -.189. The highest correlation between each of the PRI scales scores and external measures confirmed our hypotheses as follows: Maintaining Perspective with AAQ (r = .524); Perceived Control with PCS (r = .530); Scanning with PCS (r = .541); Self-Acceptance with AAQ (r = .490); and Social Resourcefulness with ESS (r = .576).

Authors

• Christopher J. Mccarthy, The University of Texas - Austin

• Susan Murphy, University of Texas

• Molly Allender, The University of Texas - Austin

• Richard G. Lambert, University of North Carolina - Charlotte