anales de psicología, 2016, vol. 32, nº 2 (mayo), 355-365 http://dx.doi.org/10.6018/analesps.32.2.216141 © Copyright 2016: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia. Murcia (España) ISSN edición impresa: 0212-9728. ISSN edición web (http://revistas.um.es/analesps): 1695-2294 - 355 - Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI) in older people Laura Rubio 1 , Cristina G. Dumitrache 2 , Eulogio Cordón-Pozo 3 , y Ramona Rubio-Herrera 2 1 Departamento de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Burgos (España). 2 Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Universidad de Granada (España). 3 Departamento de Organización de Empresas, Universidad de Granada (España). Título: Propiedades psicométricas de la versión española del Inventario de Estrategias de Afrontamiento en personas mayores. Resumen: El objetivo del estudio fue evaluar las propiedades psicométri- cas del Inventario de Estrategias de Afrontamiento (CSI) en personas ma- yores. Para ello, se administró el cuestionario a 243 personas con edades comprendidas entre los 55 y 99 años. Los resultados muestran una estruc- tura factorial de primer orden similar a la de la versión original y la adapta- ción al castellano en población general. Además se observaron elevados ni- veles de consistencia interna y validez convergente en las diferentes estra- tegias primarias. Sin embargo, la escala Evitación de Problemas no superó el test de validez y fiabilidad por lo que se propone la eliminación de 2 de sus ítems. Por otro lado en este trabajo se confirma la estructura secundaria y terciaria del inventario obtenida en la versión original y que no se conse- guía en los estudios de adaptación y replicación al castellano. Palabras clave: CSI, afrontamiento, mayores, propiedades psicométricas, versión española. Abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric proper- ties of the Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI) in a sample of 243 people aged 55 to 99 years old. The first order factorial structure was similar to the structure of the original version of the CSI and to the Spanish adapta- tion with general population. Furthermore, high levels of internal con- sistency and of convergent validity were observed in the different primary scales. Nevertheless, the problem avoidance scale did not surpass the va- lidity and reliability tests. Due to it we propose to delete two of the items of this scale. On the other hand, in this study we confirmed the secondary and tertiary structure obtained in the original version of the inventory that was neither confirmed in the Spanish adaptation study nor the other stud- ies on the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the CSI. Key words: CSI, coping, elderly, psychometric properties, Spanish ver- sion. 1* Introduction Coping strategies have been defined as those behaviors and cognitive abilities used by people to deal with internal and environmental demands that are perceived as stressful (Folkman, 1984; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). If individuals consider the situation to be meaningful to them and if they perceive their personal resources as ineffective or inadequate to solve it, the situation becomes stressful (Lazarus & Folk- man, 1984). Because the way in which a person copes with stressful situations determines the impact that these situa- tions will have on his or her well-being, health and quality of life (Englbrecht et al., 2012; Gustems-Carnicers & Calderón, 2013; Skinner, Edge, Altman, & Sherwood, 2003) coping strategies constitute a relevant aspect of psychological func- tioning. Several classifications have been proposed for coping strategies: active and passive coping, problem-focused or emotion-focused, approach or avoidance strategies and func- tional and dysfunctional coping (Carver, Scheier, & Wein- traub, 1989; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Maddi, 1980). The classification of strategies into active or passive strategies is based on the individual’s attitude to solve the stressful situa- tion (Carver et al., 1989; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Prob- lem-focused coping refers to skills used to modify the prob- lem or the stressor and include problem solving strategies. Meanwhile emotion-focused coping includes abilities to manage emotions that arise in stressful situations, such as us- * Dirección para correspondencia [Correspondence address]: Ramona Rubio Herrera. Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación. Facultad de Psicología. Universidad de Granada. Campus de la Cartuja s/n, 18071 Granada (Spain). E-mail: rrubioh@ugr.es ing social support or self-control (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Approach strategies include problem-focused and emotion- focused coping and aim at managing or transforming the stressful situation, while avoidance strategies refer to escap- ing the problem (Maddi, 1980). Classifying strategies into functional and dysfunctional coping depends on the situa- tion, for a specific event a particular coping strategy might be functional while for another event the same coping strategy might be dysfunctional. As a result of the different existing coping classifications there are many instruments that assess how people cope with demanding circumstances. The majority of these question- naires have been adapted to the Spanish context. As such there are Spanish versions of the COPE inventory (Carver et al., 1989; Crespo & Cruzado, 1997), the Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI) (Cano, Rodríguez, & García, 2007; Tobin, Holroyd, Reynolds, & Kigal, 1989), the adult form of Coping Responses Inventory (Kirchner, Forns, Muñoz, & Pereda, 2008; Moos, 1993), the Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CAE) (Sandín & Chorot, 2003) and of the Self-Efficacy Scale for Coping with Stress (EAEAE) (Godoy Izquierdo et al., 2008). Of all these instruments, the CSI could be considered one of the most interesting because it provides information about several relevant aspects: the stressful event experi- enced by the participants, the frequency of use of eight pri- mary coping strategies and the degree of perceived coping self-efficacy (Cano et al., 2007; Tobin et al., 1989). The original CSI (Tobin et al., 1989) was developed from the Ways of Coping Scale (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). In or- der to develop the CSI, Tobin et al. (1989) followed Folk- man and Lazarus’s classification (1980) of problem-focused