A comparison of two techniques for scoring episodic coping data

This study compared two techniques for scoring situation-specific ‘episodic’ coping data. The first technique consisted of the method of raw frequency scores, while the second technique consisted of the method of percentage scores. Seventy college undergraduates described how they coped with and emotionally reacted to a real-life anger provoking situation. Five types of episodic coping strategies were examined in relation to six situational indices of negative emotional reactivity. Forty percent of the cases (12 of 30 correlations) relating coping to emotional reactivity differed by scoring procedure. This high discrepancy rate is consistent with previous research, and suggests that different scoring procedures can yield divergent patterns of findings. It was concluded that scoring-related methodological variance may lead different studies to draw conflicting conclusions about coping processes. Methodologically rigorous research is needed to better understand the conditions that produce these discrepancies, and the circumstances under which one scoring technique might be preferred over the other.