The authors of this study aimed to develop and validate the College Students’ Coping with Public Health Crisis Scale (CSPHCS) among Chinese students, designed to assess coping strategies used during public health crises. This study had a rigorous, three-phase process comprising item development, scale development, and scale evaluation. Within these phases, a total of nine systematic steps were implemented. A total of 548 questionnaires were distributed, with 525 valid responses retained. A random subsample of 300 participants was used for exploratory factor analysis, and the remaining 225 were reserved for confirmatory factor analysis. The exploratory factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure after removing items with high cross-loadings. These factors were identified as (1) Information and Mental Health Support Coping, (2) Communication and Preventive Action Coping, and (3) Self-Regulatory and Expressive Coping, accounting for 50.14% of the total variance. The confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-factor model with acceptable fit indices (CFI = 0.887; TLI = 0.892; RMSEA = 0.077). The scale showed good reliability (α = 0.763, ω = 0.745). To sum up, the CSPHCS is shown to be a psychometrically sound instrument with implications for research and practice in understanding how college students cope with public health crises.
Cheng et al. (Fri,) studied this question.