# Coping strategies in challenging situations among informal caregivers: validation of the newly developed six-item German short version of the Brief COPE Inventory (COPE 6)

## TL;DR

This study validates a six-item German version of the Brief COPE Inventory to assess functional and dysfunctional coping strategies in informal caregivers.

## Contribution

The COPE 6 is introduced as a theory-based, short version of the Brief COPE to measure coping strategies more economically.

## Key findings

- The COPE 6's functional coping subscale showed acceptable reliability and validity.
- The dysfunctional coping subscale had weak correlations and insufficient convergent validity.
- The FC subscore was strongly associated with the Brief COPE FC subscore.

## Abstract

The Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced Inventory (Brief COPE) is a well-established instrument for assessing coping strategies. Nevertheless, research has shown that it has a heterogenous factor structure, thus suggesting the need for a more economical version that considers previously identified broader factor structures. Consequently, the COPE 6 was developed as a six-item short version that measures functional coping (FC) and dysfunctional coping (DC) strategies. The aim of this study was to validate the COPE 6.

The validation sample included 961 German informal caregivers. A principal component analysis was conducted. Cronbach’s alpha and the Spearman-Brown formula were calculated to analyze reliability. The item characteristics were identified by discriminatory power and item difficulty indices. Construct validity was analyzed by testing five hypotheses.

Two components were extracted: FC and DC. The reliability was α = .71 for the FC subscale and rsb = .16 for the DC subscale. The FC subscore was largely associated with the Brief COPE FC subscore and weakly associated with the Benefits of Being a Caregiver Scale score. The DC subscore showed small correlations with both the Brief COPE DC subscore and the short version of the Burden Scale for Family Caregivers score. Correlations with demographic factors and the subscales of the Social Desirability-Gamma Short Scale were negligible to small.

The COPE 6 is the first theory-based adaptation of the Brief COPE to measure FC in an economical way. The FC subscale represents a valid and reliable tool for assessing FC strategies. The current form of the DC subscale appears to measure two extreme aspects of DC with insufficient convergent validity so far. Additional research is needed to develop this subscale further.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-025-03815-5.