Anticipatory coping skills inventory for alcohol and drugs abstinence: additional psychometric studies and preparation of manual for application, counting and interpretation

• Grant number: 13/21912-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: August 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Zilda Aparecida Pereira Del Prette
• Grantee: Lucas Guimarães Cardoso de Sá
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Coping skills are described as one of the most important variables to promote or to maintain abstinence from psychoactive substances. Despite its importance, few attention has been given, over the years, to the development of tools to assess this variable in this specific context. Recently, some efforts have been made to change the status quo in this area, including in Brazil, where it was developed the Anticipatory Coping Skills Inventory for Abstinence of Alcohol and other Drugs (IDHEA-AD, as in portuguese). Although preliminary studies had showed satisfactory evidences of validity and reliability of the instrument, Resolution 002/2003 of the Brazilian Federal Council of Psychology (Conselho Federal de Psicologia - CFP) recommends the need of accumulating and presenting a series of other evidences of validity that would allow to safely interpret the individual's characteristics tested by the instrument. The overall objective of this proposal is to meet the requirements for IDHEA-AD to be considered suitable for use by professionals. In this order, validity and reliability for the internal structure will be investigated by confirmatory analyses and a series of other validation steps will be developed to fulfill the requirements recommended by the CFP: evidences of structural equivalence for different groups; evidences of convergent validity with other construct of coping skills and of concurrent criterion with the level of involvement with substance; establishment of normative standards for interpreting the scores, elaboration of a technical manual for application, calculation and interpretation of the results and submission to the Brazilian System of Psychological Tests Evaluation.