Factor structure of the Coping Inventory for Competitive Sport with a sample of participants at the 2001 New York marathon

Objectives: To test the first- and second-order factorial structure of the Coping Inventory for Competitive Sport (CICS; Psychol. Sport Exercise, 3, (2002) 1-34) with a sample of marathoners. Design: Retrospective. Data were collected within 6 h after the completion of the 2001 New York marathon. Method: A sample of 366 French marathoners (82% male; mean age = 43.6 years) completed the CICS. Data were analyzed with descriptive, reliability, and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Results: Descriptive analyses revealed that the distribution of four items was severely non-normal whereas reliability analyses showed that three items were unreliable indicators of their underlying coping strategies. Results of a first-order CFA provided evidence for the reasonable fit of a 28-item nine-factor model in which four pairs of uniqueness were allowed to correlate. Results of a hierarchical CFA provided marginal evidence for a model in which coping strategies were merged in three higher-order dimensions representing task-, distraction-, and disengagement-oriented coping. This model fitted the data more adequately than a competing model representing engagement- vs. disengagement-oriented coping. Conclusions: Despite the unreliability of some items, results of the CFAs lent some support for the factorial validity of the CICS with marathoners. Hence, 28 items can be used to obtain a microscopic (coping strategies) and a macroscopic (coping dimensions) assessment of athletes' coping efforts during a marathon. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.