Abstract
Inventory (VPMI) (Brown and Nicassio, 1987) was created to assess two ways of coping with chronic pain: active and passive. The aim of the present paper was to extend the utility of the VPMI to evaluate specific coping strategies. 210 chronic pain patients participated in the first study. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the Active and Passive scales of the VPMI could be divided into four reliable scales: Catastrophizing, Social Support Seeking, Supression and Behavioral Coping. Studies 2 and 3 evaluated the criteria validity of the general and the specific scales in relation to pain intensity, negative mood and impairment in two samples of pain patients (N=112 and N= 135). Passive coping, and specially catastrophizing showed a strong consistent relationship with deficient outcomes in adaptation.
