Validation of the European Portuguese version of the Brief RCOPE: methodological study

Background Being a family caregiver often leads to a burden, with an impact on diferent dimensions of life. As so, the caregiver develops coping strategies to deal with stressful situations. Coping is a multifactorial and individual process related to responding to stressful situations, such as being a caregiver of a relative with health conditions. There are diferent coping strategies, such as spiritual/religious coping. The 14-item Brief RCOPE is a widely used instrument to assess spiritual/ religious coping, but it is not available in European Portuguese. This instrument is a short version of RCOPE which has 63 items. The aim was to translate, adapt and validate the 14-item Brief RCOPE in Portuguese caregivers of an adult relative with a health condition, such as dementia, mental illness, disabilities, among other physical illnesses. Materials and methods To examine the psychometric properties of the Brief RCOPE it was used the methodological guideline provided by Sousa and Rojjanasrirat. Results The linguistic and conceptual equivalence of the scale was established. A total of 105 questionnaires were included in this study. The internal consistency was acceptable (Cronbach’s α = 0.86). The Principal Axis Factor (PAF) analysis with varimax rotation identifed two factors made up of 13 items, and one item was excluded from the scale. Conclusion The European Portuguese version of the Brief RCOPE is a reliable and valid measure for assessing the religious coping of family caregivers of adults with health conditions.