Validity and Reliability of Cultural Mix Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations among Healthcare Professionals in Ghana Amidst COVID-19

Francis Ankomah; Frank Quansah; Edmond Kwesi Agormedah; John Elvis Hagan Jr; Medina Srem-Sai; Francis Sambah; Abdul-Aziz Seidu; Edward Kwabena Ameyaw; Bright Opoku Ahinkorah; Eugene Kofuor Maafo Darteh; Thomas Schack

doi:10.3390/ijerph191710651

Validity and Reliability of Cultural Mix Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations among Healthcare Professionals in Ghana Amidst COVID-19

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 26;19(17):10651. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191710651.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Education and Psychology, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast PMB TF0494, Ghana.
² Department of Education, SDA College of Education, Asokore-Koforidua P.O. Box AS 18, Ghana.
³ Department of Educational Foundations, University of Education, Winneba P.O. Box 25, Ghana.
⁴ Department of Business & Social Sciences Education, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast PMB TF0494, Ghana.
⁵ Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast PMB TF0494, Ghana.
⁶ Neurocognition and Action-Biomechanics-Research Group, Faculty of Psychology and Sports Science, Bielefeld University, Postfach 10 01 31, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany.
⁷ Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Sports, University of Education, Winneba P.O. Box 25, Ghana.
⁸ College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia.
⁹ Centre for Gender and Advocacy, Takoradi Technical University, Takoradi P.O. Box 256, Ghana.
¹⁰ School of Public Health, Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia.
¹¹ Department of Population and Health, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast PMB TF0494, Ghana.

Abstract

The Cultural Mix Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations is one of the recent coping measures developed to overcome the weaknesses of existing coping scales. Since its development and validation, the inventory has been used by previous studies to measure coping among teachers and students in stressful situations. Health professionals are workers who typically encounter stressful situations due to their work demands. In this study, we assessed the validity and reliability of cultural mix inventory for stressful situations among healthcare professionals in Ghana. The research was guided by three major objectives: (1) to assess the factor structure of the cultural mix coping inventory, (2) to evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the cultural mix coping inventory based on internal structure and (3) to test for evidence of criterion validity based on the external structure of the measure. Approximately 312 health workers were purposefully sampled to participate in the study. The study confirmed the original four-factor solution of the coping inventory with evidence of the construct validity based on the internal structure. Validity evidence based on the external structure of the measure was found to be sufficient. Given the COVID-19 pandemic and coupled with the stressful nature in the line of duty of healthcare professionals, this inventory provides a useful and sound measure of coping options among this cohort.

Keywords: Ghana; coping inventory; culture; health workers; reliability; stressful situation; validity.

MeSH terms

Adaptation, Psychological
COVID-19*
Delivery of Health Care
Ghana
Humans
Pandemics
Psychometrics
Reproducibility of Results
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

The study received no external funding. However, the authors sincerely thank Bielefeld University, Germany for providing financial support through the Institutional Open Access Publication Fund for the article processing charge (APC).