TRANSLATION, CULTURAL ADAPTATION, AND PSYCHOMETRIC VALIDATION OF THE URDU POSITIVE COPING STYLE SCALE AMONG PAKISTANI ADOLESCENTS

Abstract

Positive coping is a crucial psychological trait with which adolescents cope with daily challenges, interpersonal conflict, school requirements, and other stressful events. While measures of coping have been created and widely employed in international research, instruments that have been created in one linguistic and cultural context cannot be assumed to have the same conceptual meaning when used with adolescents in another context. In Pakistan, this is especially important as Urdu is the native language for many and the language spoken for interpersonal communication as well as education, while some of the psychological instruments are available in English. The present study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the Positive Coping Style subscale of the Trait Coping Style Questionnaire (TCQ) into Urdu and to investigate the cross-language equivalence, reliability and factorial validity among the Pakistani adolescents. The translation process used a systematic forward–backward approach based on Brislin's model of translation and recommendations for cross-cultural adaptation. Forward translations were made by independent bilingual translators and then reviewed by an expert panel and reconciled. The bilingual experts then undertook a backward translation, which was reviewed by a second committee for discrepancies to achieve conceptual, semantic and cultural equivalence. Prior to psychometric assessment, cross-language validation was performed. The exploratory factor analysis was performed on 150 adolescents and the confirmatory factor analysis was performed on an independent sample of 200 adolescents. Results of the exploratory analysis indicated that a one-factor structure was clear, with a Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value of .965 and a significant Bartlett's test of sphericity, χ² (45) = 1130.17, p < .001. The single factor accounted for 65.20% of the variance with an eigenvalue of 6.520. The factor loadings were between .763 and .858, and communalities were between .582 and .736. Confirmatory factor analysis provided excellent support for the one-factor model, χ² (35) = 38.85, df = 35, χ²/df = 1.022, CFI = 1.00, SRMR = .020, RMSEA = .000, and PClose = .985. The standardised factor loadings varied between .76 and .83. The Urdu scale had a high internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .90). In sum the results show that Urdu Positive Coping Style Scale is a psychometrically sound and culturally appropriate instrument for measuring positive coping tendencies of an Urdu-speaking sample of adolescents from Pakistan. The measure can be used to help carry out culturally sensitive research into adolescent psychological adjustment, positive mental health, family relations, social support and behaviour associated with technology.