Methodological Challenges in Coping and Adaptation Research

Abstract

Investigators concerned with peoples' ability to cope and adapt to their life circumstances are faced with a multitude of methodological challenges. Many of these challenges have been discussed at length by Lazarus (1993). The following discussion highlights these and other challenges at each step of the research process. Assumptions and Values Investigators of coping and adaptation processes and outcomes are often theoretical purists. While the test of one theory may advance understanding, this purity of perspective leaves alternative explanations unexplored. A theoretical pluralist would advocate an explanation of a person's predicament from a variety of theoretical vantage points (coping and adaptation, biological and sociological) in search of the variables which combine with coping variables to explain adjustment outcomes. For example, in research we have conducted, poorly adjusted chronically ill persons with poor problem solving capacity who lived alone or with low levels of purpose-in-life, were the patients most likely to benefit from nurse counselling in addition to usual physician specialist clinic care. If they were poorly adjusted yet able to solve problems and lived with someone, they did just as well with physician care alone (Roberts, et al., 1994). Moos (1992) has also advocated the study of these interactions between pretreatment life context variables and amount and type of treatment. Imagine how much less we would know if we took a pure versus pluralistic theoretical perspective.