Religious and Secular Coping Strategies of Reappraisal

Abstract

In times of disaster, religion is said to be a powerful resource of meaning-focused coping. If offers motifs, symbols, and stories to reappraise situations and thereby ascribe meaning to them. Aside from religion, in modern times secular resources are feasible for meaning making during disaster as well. Empirical instruments that assess both religious and secular types of meaning-focused coping, however, are not available. Relevant instruments focus exclusively on either religious or secular coping. This paper addresses this desideratum by supplementing the RCOPE-scales of reappraisal with relevant scales of secular reappraisal. Three scales – Trust in Science, Consequences of Lifestyle, and Reappraisal of Science’s Power – have been constructed and tested on a sample of university students and staff members coping with the Corona pandemic. CFA shows a satisfactory fit for the supplementing instrument when Trust in Science is removed from the analysis. Correlation analysis with scales of religiosity (Centrality of Religiosity and Post-Critical Belief) indicates a good external validity of the new instrument. In consequence, the two supplements of Consequences of Lifestyle and Reappraisal of Science’s Power facilitate assessment of secular meaning-focused coping aside with relevant religious coping, while the Trust in Science Reappraisal scale needs further development.