Assessing adaptive style in children: Concordance of different classification approaches

Research on the adaptive style paradigm in children lacks a single, dominant approach to classification. The primary goal of this study was to evaluate concordance among several adaptive style classification approaches. Participants included 130 children with cancer and 368 healthy control children. Children completed multiple defensiveness and distress measures and were assigned to adaptive style categories (repressor, high anxious, low anxious, defensive-high anxious) according to four methodological approaches. The partial–longitudinal study design allowed for assessment of stability for two approaches. Concordance among approaches was moderate. Stability of classification was moderate, and using an anger measure in lieu of an anxiety measure yielded greater stability. These findings reveal general comparability among measurement approaches in terms of inter-approach concordance, and they highlight the need to further address the reliability and predictive validity of adaptive style in children.