Anxiety and coping

There was little evidence of there being six subscales of coping, nor indeed did the OSI's measure of mental ill-health emerge as a single, global dimension of psychological health, but two major factors of health emerged, ‘negative affectivity’ and ‘positive affect’ or psychological well-being in the work-place.

Abstract

In a large survey of U.K. senior police officers, the psychometric properties of two of the Occupational Stress Indicator's (OSI) scales, coping strategies and mental ill-health, were examined, as well as their degree of interrelationship. There was little evidence of there being six subscales of coping, nor indeed did the OSI's measure of mental ill-health emerge as a single, global dimension of psychological health. In fact, two major factors of health emerged, ‘negative affectivity’ and ‘positive affect’ or psychological well-being in the work-place. Moreover, the more reliable subscale of coping skills, ‘active/rational’ coping was related to positive and negative affect, but ‘problem-focused’ coping was scarcely related to either of the two subcomponents of ill-health. The implications of this are discussed.