The Development of the Filipino Coping Strategies Scale

Filipinos are known for being resilient but how far can our resiliency go when it comes
to stress? All individuals experience stress every day, it only differs on how we define the
situation and how we will react to it. Each individual has coping mechanisms that help them
relieves stress.
If I were to mention ways of coping strategies of some of the people I know, some tend
to walk or jog in order to release stress. Some take caffeine to freshen up their mind. Some are
into “Me time” and music to help them calm and gather their self and thoughts. As for me, I
cope up and deal with stress by having my alone time, process what is on my mind, what are
the possible ways I can eliminate some unwanted thoughts. There are times that you turn to
God, having an alone time at the church, it will make you feel at ease and having the feeling
that He removed all your worries. It really differs on how and what ways people do to relieve
stress.
I choose this reading because it is really connected to us. It tackles about the resiliency
and how do we really coping with stress.
According to the research article reading written by John Rilveria, there is not much in
the research of coping strategies in the local context. More tests or scale on coping strategies
that we are using today is from the Western. Thus, the development of local scale on how
Filipinos’ coping strategies on stress will be beneficial to everyone. It may be more helpful
today since we are experiencing Pandemic which causes a lot of stress lately that affects the
mental health of the Filipinos.
The reading states that we, Filipinos, are resilient because we can cope up with all the
stressful situations we are in to. We also ranked 20 th on the Happiest country despite our socio-
economic difficulties but this research aims to create a scale to measure coping strategies of
the Filipino and to have a stable pattern of coping. There are westernized test that are used to
test the factorial validity of it here in the Philippines and the results show that Filipinos tend to
cope up with stress through emotional support, bayanihan, use of substance, use of humor and
our spiritual faith with God. Also Filipinos are naturally “matiisin” and “makimkim”, we tend to
exhibit this behaviour because we don’t want to be a burden to our family as well as to hide
what we really feel. Sex Differences also has an impact in this research. Results show that
women are naturally into emotional support while men are into rational when coping with
stress. The study also uses the trait-oriented approach which differences in coping styles are
tied up with personality differences and that makes a stable pattern of one’s coping mechanism
is related to their personality.
The Filipino Coping Strategies Scale is composed of 37 item questionnaire that are
divided into nine domains in the scale that serves as the coping dispositional profile of the
respondent. The reliability and validity of the scale is high which passes it to be a good and
trustworthy test. It satisfactory supported the psychometric properties a test should have.
It is unique and interesting that people in our field develop a test that can really help to
fully understand what coping strategies do Filipino use and how stable these strategies help
them to relieve stress aside from being resilient. The scale is timely relevant on what we are
experiencing today. It is also important if we can utilize our profession to develop more test or
scale that is based on our local context. It will be more useful, relevant and easy to understand
since it is written in our own native language.
It takes a long time to develop and construct a test that is in our local context because
we all know that there are complex process before we can come up to a test that is valid and
reliable. It takes more than years for it to be trustworthy but in our profession, it is more
fulfilling if we can construct a test with our local norms for the people to fully understand what
is the purpose of the test. Our fight with mental health does not only limit with spreading
awareness about it, therapy and counselling, it will always start on how we approach and how
the local people especially those in the lower class can fully understand us.