Pe rso n. indio id. 0~8 Vol. 13, No. II, pp. 1249-1251, 1992 0191-8869/92 55.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved Copyright 0 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd Crisis support, attributional style, coping style, and post-traumatic symptoms STEVE JOSEPH,’ RUTH WILLIAMS* and WILLIAM YULE* ‘Deportment of Psychology, University of Ulster at Coleraine, Coleraine. Co Londonderry, BT52 ISA N. Ireland and ‘Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, England (Received 2 December 1991) Summary-Although disaster is believed to be aetiological in the development of post-traumatic stress disorder, there exist large unexplained individual differences in the severity and chronicity of symptoms. For this reason, attention has begun to focus on those variables that might mediate between disaster and subsequent outcome. One such variable is crisis support. However, it has been suggested that associations between self-report measures of support and symptoms may be a function of attributional style and coping style. It is shown in the present study that crisis support is able to predict symptoms over and above attributional style and coping style. lNTRODUCTlON Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is defined by: an event outside the range of usual human experience; persistent reexperiencing of the event; persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the event; and persistent symptoms of increased arousal (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). Although these symptoms are believed to arise as a direct result of disaster, there are often large individual differences in the severity and chronicity of symptoms. For this reason, there has been much interest in the personal and social factors that might mediate between disaster and mental health. Previous research has shown that greater crisis support received from family and friends is associated with lower psychological distress following disaster (Joseph, Andrews, Williams & Yule, 1992). However, it could be argued that, as the measure of crisis support was obtained using a self-report methodology, its relationship to symptomatology may be a function of personality rather than the situation. Individual differences in personality might influence perceptions of both crisis support and psychological distress (Sarason, Sarason & Shearin, 1986). Two aspects of personality seem particularly relevant to this question: attributional style and coping style. It may be that higher ratings of crisis support simply reflect a more optimistic attributional style and a more adaptive coping style. The aim of this study, therefore, was to investigate whether crisis support would retain its association with symptoms over and above these personality variables. METHOD Event In the early evening of 21 October 1988, a party of over 400 British schoolchildren, accompanied by over 90 teachers and other adults, set sail on the Jupiter from Piraeus harbour in Greece for an educational cruise of the eastern Mediterranean. Twenty minutes out of harbour, an oil tanker collided amidships, the Jupifer was holed and rapidly took in water, listing as it did so. Many fearing that they would drown, had to jump into the oil- and debris-strewn water to reach the safety of the rescue boat. One school girl, one teacher, and two seamen died in the accident. Subjects Ss were 35 survivors (27 women and 8 men) ranging in age from 23 to 75 years (mean = 48). All were U.K. nationals who had been on board the ship at the time of its sinking. None of the Ss lost any family members in the disaster. Procedure Forty-five survivors were written to in February 1990 and asked to complete a battery of questionnaires about how they were coping with the effects of the disaster. By May 1990, 35 had replied either to the initial request or to a reminder letter posted out in March 1990. Measures Attributional style was assessed using the life evaluation and attribution of responsibility questionnaire (Brewin & Shapiro, 1984). This yields two six-item attributional scales. The first, responsibility for positive outcomes taps whether in general a person views positive outcomes as occurring because of his or her own effort or because of chance. The second, responsibility for negative outcomes is concerned with the extent to which a person attributes negative outcomes to internal factors such as his or her character or behaviour. Each item was rated on a six-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Scores on each of the scales had a possible range of 6 to 36, higher scores indicating more internal responsibility. The two scales have been shown to be independent and both have demonstrated adequate internal reliability (Brewin & Shapiro, 1984). Coping style was assessed using items selected from previous work on coping (Carver, Schier & Weintraub, 1989). Recent work suggests that there are three broad coping dispositions: task focused, emotion focused, and avoidant coping (Endler & Parker, 1990). Items were conceptually grouped into these categories giving three scales each with ten items (see Appendix). Each item was asked for using a dispositional format (Carver et al., 1989), and answered on a four-point scale 1249