EVENT REVIEW IN THE COPING PROCESS OF PAROUS WOMEN.
Contributors: University of Maryland at Baltimore.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 232
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The study examined review of birth as a coping mechanism in parous women. Review was examined in relationship to anxiety, control, construct distance, and other coping strategies. In addition, coping strategies were assessed. The study used volunteers from childbirth education classes and from obstetricians offices. The study participants were 111 women who experienced normal labors, deliveries, and delivered healthy infants.

The women in the study viewed labor and delivery as stressful, challenging, and as having a lot at stake both before and after birth. The subjects thought significantly more about birth before than after. The women reported a decreased perception of control over the experience after birth than from before. To cope with the stress, before birth women predicted they would use event review, seeking social support, positive reappraisal, planful problem solving, distancing, and escape/avoidance, but not confrontive coping or accepting responsibility. After birth the women reported significantly less use of distancing, accepting responsibility, and self-controlling than from before birth. Event review was identified as the coping strategy with the highest mean item response both before and after birth.

Using multiple correlation, event review was found to have a positive, significant relationship to the subscales of positive reappraisal, seeking social support, confrontive coping, and self-controlling coping. Together the four subscales shared 42% of the variance in the event review subscale.

Canonical correlation was used to examine the predictability of the postpartum scale use from the prepartum scales. Seven significant dimensions were extracted indicating predictability. Within each dimension there were patterns of coping strategies identified.

Event review was examined using Kelly's theory of construct distance. The results of the data analysis (t (101) = 3.62, p < .000) showed that the women with greater distance between constructs used significantly more review. However, the state anxiety scores were not different (t (96) = .14, p = .889). Using discriminant analysis, trait anxiety did discriminate between review groups (F (2,86) = 10.983, p < .01). Trait anxiety and construct distance also were the only significant predictors of review extracted using multiple regression. Finally, correlational statistics showed that higher trait anxiety scores were related to higher reported usage of all coping subscales except distancing and planful problem-solving.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03, Section: B, page: 0705.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AT BALTIMORE, 1987.

School code: 0373.