Psychologisch-diagnostische Verfahren zur Erfassung von Stress und Krankheitsbewältigung im deutschsprachigen Raum

Abstract

This paper aims to give an overview of German psychodiagnostic inventories measuring stress, coping, and coping with diseases. Until today, the concepts and definitions of Lazarus’ transactional stress model serve as gold standard in coping research. It is well known that stress can be a source of illness, and that illness can be a source of stress. Especially from an interventional point of view, it is necessary to measure stress and coping soundly in order to tailor intervention to the specific needs of the patients. Therefore, several psychodiagnostic inventories were constructed to measure stress, reactions to stress, and coping with illness. German psychodiagnostic inventories are presented that investigate coping with stress for different groups and scopes: adults, children and teenagers, global coping questionnaires, and inventories for coping with diseases. A special focus is given to test construction, application, normative data, reliability and validity. Capability and limits of the actual coping research and its translation to applied fields in medical, health and rehabilitation psychology are discussed.