Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Latack Coping Scale in the general working population in Korea

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Currently, there are no assessment tools for measuring coping strategies for stress at work in the Korean language.

OBJECTIVE:

The purpose of this study was to translate the Latack Coping Scale to workplace stress into Korean and examine its psychometric properties in a Korean working population.

METHODS:

Translation of the the Latack Coping Scale was performed according to the scientific guidelines for cross-cultural adaptation. Two hundred and forty one general workers in Korea completed the new Korean version of the Latack Coping Scale as well as the Type D Personality Scale-14 (negative affectivity). Psychometric properties (reliability and validity) were evaluated.

RESULTS:

Factor analysis yielded a model that was consistent with the originally proposed subscales of the questionnaire. Good to excellent internal consistency and measurement consistency over a one week interval were obtained for five subscales (Cronbach’s alpha; 0.61 to 0.86 and ICC (2.2); 0.80 to 0.87). Escape coping scales were positively associated with Type D personality while control coping scales were negatively associated with Type D personality.

CONCLUSIONS:

This Korean version of the Latack Coping Scale has shown excellent validity and reliability in the Korean working population. Organizations investigating work stress and coping methods in Korean workers can use this instrument with confidence.

Keywords

Coping strategy work stress psychometric properties translation cultural adaptation

1 Introduction

Depression and anxiety are the most costly mental illnesses affecting individuals and are predicted to be the leading cause of disease burden by 2030 [1, 2]. For many, mental health disorders negatively impact their social activities and quality of life, and may be associated with increased suicide rates [3]. A Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare epidemiological report in 2011associated the rising prevalence of major mental health disorders over the last decade (from 1.8% to 3.1% for depression, 5.0% to 6.8% for anxiety) with a peak in suicide rates (21.2 per 100,000 individuals) which is the highest amongst Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries [4]. One factor that may have a significant impact on mental health is work-related stress.

Mental health disorders are a common and costly problem in the workplace [5, 6]. Work-related stress is defined as the potentially harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of work are unmatched by the capabilities, resources, or needs, of the worker [7]. As such, work-related stress is thought to increase when work demands cannot be reduced by the worker’s coping resources [8]. This is thought to be a cyclic process whereby an inability to cope with work stress has a detrimental impact on mental health, which in turn further reduces coping at work resulting in escalating or persisting work-related stress and mental health issues [9 –11]. Coping strategies seem to be an important factor in mediating the relationship between work-related stress and mental health.

Coping is defined as cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage stressful situations that tax or exceed the individual’s resources [12]. Global coping to a general situation has been sufficiently acknowledged in research, however, empirical studies of coping related to work have not been undertaken [13]. One instrument that is specific to measuring coping behaviour to work-related stress is the Latack Coping Scale [13]. This scale was developed for evaluating work stress by integrating three different conceptual coping frameworks; control (direct actions and proactive cognitive evaluations to stressful situation in workplace), escape (avoidance from stressful situation), and symptoms management (manage job stress in using a different strategy such as alcohol consumption) [13 –16]. Latack and colleagues have shown good internal consistency and reliability for each scale in this instrument (coefficient alphas: help-seeking (HS) = 0.61, avoidance/resignation (A/R) = 0.74, positive-thinking (PT) = 0.76, direct action (DA) = 69, and alcohol use (AU) = 0.83).

While several generic coping assessments have been translated and validated in the Korean [17 –19] no instruments have been translated specifically for the working population. The purpose of this study was to develop a Korean version of the Latack Coping Scale and evaluate its psychometric properties when used with a Korean general worker population. This new translation is intended for subsequent use in studies by the authors involving the general working population in Korea.

2 Methods

2.1 Translation

Permission to translate the Latack Coping Scale to the Korean language was sought and received from the original developer; and was conducted according to a recommended guideline for cross-cultural adaptation of self-report measures [20, 21]. The translation consisted of five stages; 1) Forward translation, 2) Synthesis of the forward translation, 3) Back translation, 4) Expert committee review, 5) Testing of the pre-final version. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the Institutional Medical Research Ethics Committee and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

2.1.1 Forward translation

The original version of Latack Coping Scale was independently translated to Korean by two bilingual (both first language - Korean) Korean nationals currently residing and studying/working in Australia (DJ and JK). Only one of the translators (DJ) was a health professional and was familiar with the questionnaire. The other translator (JK) was not a health professional and was not familiar with the questionnaire and therefore had less preconceived bias towards the intended meaning and context of the instrument.

2.1.2 Synthesis of the forward translation

The two independent translations were synthesized and any discrepancies between translations were discussed by the translators. This process of synthesis was recorded and documented by an observer.

2.1.3 Back translation

Two professional interpreters in Korea then independently backwardly translated the synthesised Korean version back to English. An expert committee then compared the accuracy (consistency of wording and information) of the backwardly translated English version to that of the originalversion to ensure equivalence [22]. When a failure of equivalence was detected between the two versions, appropriate corrections were made to the unequivocal item within the forward translated version and another back translation was executed by a new backward translator to re-evaluate the accuracy.

2.1.4 Expert committee review

The expert committee consisted of two health professionals, one language professional and five translators (forward and backward translators). Except for blinded back translators, the committee reviewed all new translations and reported the process of translations. This committee was aimed to resolve any disparities between the original and translated questionnaire through consensus within the group. Consensus was derived via four criteria: semantic equivalence (the meaning of words), idiomatic equivalence (equivalent expression for idioms and colloquialisms), experiential equivalence (Korean cultural context), and conceptual equivalence (the validity of the concept) [21].

2.1.5 Testing of the pre-final version

A preliminary test of the pre-final version of the translated questionnaire was undertaken on a sample of the targeted population. Thirty general Korean workers completed the translated questionnaire and were then invited to a telephone interview by the primary investigator (DJ). During the telephone interview, respondents first expressed any difficulty in understanding each questionnaire item on a 3-point Likert scale (easy-moderate-difficult). Next, they explained their interpretation of the meaning of each item and their responses were rated by DJ on a 3-point Likert Scale (poor-regular-good). Lastly, DJ explained to respondents the intended original meaning of each item, and asked them to rate their interpreted level of agreement with the original meaning on a 3-point Likert Scale (disagree-neutral-agree).

Some misunderstandings of the context of items were evident for item #1, and #22. The context of “supervisor” in item #1 was misunderstood by ten respondents. Respondents were unable to determine the exact meaning of ‘supervisor’ because remnant age-related values associated with Confucian ethics suggests that anyone older than themselves is a supervisor in Korean society [23]. The term “supervisor” therefore was specifically translated to “senior manager in responsibility” to minimize confusion. Seven respondents also expressed difficulty in understanding item #22 which is the longest question item. Lengthy items can result in “violation of grammatical-syntactical equivalence” because each language has a unique word order, word syntax, and grammatical rules [24]. The major confusion with item #22 was related to “relative pronouns” such as who, whom, which, or that, which do not exist in the Korean language [25]. The item # 22 “seek advice from people outside the situation who may not have power but who can help me think of ways to do what is expected of me” consisted of three relative clauses with three relative pronouns. Korean language has a uniform head-initiated relative clause followed by the noun pronoun, which is a mirror-image of English relative clause [26]. These discrepancies in sentence structure resulted in poor interpretation of item # 22. In response, the item was translated with simpler and shorter words to reduce the loss of original meaning. Following these corrections the translated questionnaire was supplemented and deemed acceptable (see Appendix).

2.2 Psychometric testing

The reliability and validity of the translated questionnaire were examined by the process described next.

2.2.1 Sample

Participants were recruited via Korean social network services such as Facebook, Kakao-talk (mobile instant messaging application), and Naver (the largest Korean search portal). Participants ages ranged from 21 to 62 year old workers (mean age of 33.2±7.6) and all were Korean native speakers. A total of 276 participants completed the online survey containing a set of questionnaires which consisted of the translated version of the Latack Coping Scale, and the Type D Personality Scale-14 (DS-14) (described below). Thirty five participants were excluded (26 only partly completed the online survey, nine were unemployed). The 241 eligible participants (120 male) consisted of 69.3% office workers, 14.1% retailers, 6.6% blue collar workers and 9.9% other jobs.

2.2.2 Internal consistency

Internal consistency of the five subscales was evaluated via Cronbach α coefficient and accepted if the value was greater than 0.7 [27].

2.2.3 Factor structure

Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the structure validity of the Korean version of the Latack Coping scale by determining its compatibility to the original version of Latack Coping Scale [13].

2.2.4 Convergent validity

Convergent validity of the Korean version of the Latack Coping Scale was evaluated against the DS-14 [28]. The DS-14 is a short 14-item instrument developed to measure negative affect and social inhibition. Type D personality is strongly associated with emotion-focused and passive coping strategies [29]. It was therefore expected that the DS-14 would be negatively correlated with positive coping strategies (scales HS, DA, and PT), and positively correlation with negative coping strategies (scales A/R and AU).

2.2.5 Test-retest reliability

Thirty participants completed the questionnaire on two different days with at least a one week interval. Test-retest reliability was expressed with an Intraclass Correlational Coefficient (ICC_2,2) with excellent reliability considered when values exceeded 0.8 [30].

2.3 Statistical analysis

All statistical tests were performed using a SPSS statistical package for Windows Version 22 (Chicago, IL) [31]. Spearman correlation coefficients (r) were used to infer convergent validity as several sub-scales of the translated the Latack Coping Scale were not normally distributed. The feasibility of conducting exploratory factor analysis on the study sample was examined if the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index (ranged 0 to 1) was greater than 0.5 and a significant p value was found for Bartlett’s test (p < .05) [32, 33]. Principal axis factoring (PAF) with Promax rotation (oblique) was used for the factor extraction method because data were not normally distributed and scales were correlated [34, 35]. Scree plots were observed and factors extracted if eigenvalues exceeded 1 [36]. The Promax rotation method was performed to describe and assist the extracted factor loadings for all items.

3 Results

3.1 Internal consistency

Cronbach’s alpha values were 0.79, 0.61, 0.84, 0.83, and.86 for the help-seeking, avoidance/resignation, positive-thinking, direct action, and alcohol use scales, respectively, indicating goodinternal consistency for each subscale except for the avoidance/resignation scale. However, the internal consistency of the Korean version was greater in all scales than that of original version [13].

3.2 Factor structure

The KMO value (accounting for 0.860) and the results of Bartlett’s test successfully rejected the null hypothesis that the correlation matrix appeared an identity matrix (χ² = 2392.847, p = 0.00). This result confirmed that the study sample and the correlation matrix were suitable for the implementation of exploratory factor analysis. The screen plot showed that the line starting to straighten after factor 5 explained most of the variability of the model. This best fit at five factors was the same as that of the original version. The eigenvalues of the five factors were 7.226, 2.586, 1.705, 1.631 and 1.210, respectively, and 55.2% of the total variances were explained by these five factors. Table 1 demonstrates that all items had factor loadings greater than 0.3. With the exception of two items (help-seeking item #5, avoidance/resignation item #4) which loaded on the positive-thinking scale, all items successfully loaded on the correct scale as proposed in the original questionnaire.

Table 1
Loading correlations for each item of the translated questionnaire following exploratory factor analysis (n = 241). Higher factor loading values represent a stronger relationship with each subscale

Items # Factor loadings

D^* H^* P^* A^* AC^*

D5 Give it my best effort to do what I think is expected of me 0.883 0.053 –0.239 –0.015 –0.004

D1 Devote more time and energy to doing my job 0.702 –0.120 0.013 0.008 0.029

D6 Try to be very organized so that I can keep on top of things 0.695 0.068 –0.011 0.112 –0.053

D3 Try to work harder and more efficiently 0.649 –0.021 0.172 –0.073 –0.041

D4 Throw myself into my work and work harder, longer hours 0.500 –0.188 0.230 0.001 0.082

D2 Put extra attention on planning and scheduling 0.469 0.004 0.226 0.067 –0.105

H2 Request help from other people who have the power to do something for me 0.008 0.742 –0.085 0.023 0.000

H1 Seek advice from people outside the situation who may not have power but who can help me think of ways to do what is expected of me 0.121 0.727 –0.111 0.022 0.009

H4 Talk with people (other than may supervisor) who are involved –0.041 0.623 0.071 –0.066 –0.010

H6 Get together with my supervisor to discuss this –0.283 0.535 0.284 –0.041 –0.020

H3 Decide what I think should be done and explain this to the people who are affected 0.370 0.397 0.063 –0.025 0.046

P5 Try to think of myself as a winner – as someone who always comes through 0.057 –0.027 0.684 –0.035 –0.013

P6 Tell myself that I can probably work things out to my advantage 0.227 –0.086 0.669 –0.110 0.015

P2 Remind myself that other people have been in this situation and that I can probably do as well as they did 0.074 0.174 0.472 0.193 –0.046

P4 Try to see this situation as an opportunity to learn and develop new skills 0.189 0.156 0.461 –0.026 –0.046

A4 Try not to get concerned about it –0.026 –0.034 0.436 0.291 –0.037

P3 Think about the challenges I can find in this situation 0.306 0.033 0.388 –0.133 0.090

H5 Work on changing policies which caused this situation 0.031 0.283 0.385 –0.011 0.019

P1 Think of ways to use this situation to show what I can do 0.252 0.076 0.356 0.020 0.079

A1 Try to keep away from this type of situation 0.071 0.027 –0.007 0.783 0.047

A2 Avoid being in this situation if I can –0.077 –0.039 0.036 0.630 –0.008

A5 Tell myself that time takes care of situations like this 0.022 –0.079 0.258 0.541 –0.009

A3 Separate myself as much as possible from the people who created this situation 0.082 –0.038 –0.057 0.446 –0.033

A6 Accept this situation because there is nothing I can do to change it –0.120 0.135 0.021 0.295 0.102

AC2 Drink more than a moderate amount of liquor, beer or wine 0.007 –0.016 –0.019 0.045 0.886

AC1 Drink more than a moderate amount of liquor, beer or wine –0.012 0.010 –0.006 –0.006 0.854

Chronbach’s α 0.832 0.837 0.791 0.610 0.863

Rotated Eigenvalues 6.717 2.099 1.275 1.136 0.671

Rotated % Explained variance Total 45.765 25.835 8.073 4.906 4.368 2.582

Items #	Factor loadings
D5	Give it my best effort to do what I think is expected of me	0.883	0.053	–0.239	–0.015	–0.004
D1	Devote more time and energy to doing my job	0.702	–0.120	0.013	0.008	0.029
D6	Try to be very organized so that I can keep on top of things	0.695	0.068	–0.011	0.112	–0.053
D3	Try to work harder and more efficiently	0.649	–0.021	0.172	–0.073	–0.041
D4	Throw myself into my work and work harder, longer hours	0.500	–0.188	0.230	0.001	0.082
D2	Put extra attention on planning and scheduling	0.469	0.004	0.226	0.067	–0.105
H2	Request help from other people who have the power to do something for me	0.008	0.742	–0.085	0.023	0.000
H1	Seek advice from people outside the situation who may not have power but who can help me think of ways to do what is expected of me	0.121	0.727	–0.111	0.022	0.009
H4	Talk with people (other than may supervisor) who are involved	–0.041	0.623	0.071	–0.066	–0.010
H6	Get together with my supervisor to discuss this	–0.283	0.535	0.284	–0.041	–0.020
H3	Decide what I think should be done and explain this to the people who are affected	0.370	0.397	0.063	–0.025	0.046
P5	Try to think of myself as a winner – as someone who always comes through	0.057	–0.027	0.684	–0.035	–0.013
P6	Tell myself that I can probably work things out to my advantage	0.227	–0.086	0.669	–0.110	0.015
P2	Remind myself that other people have been in this situation and that I can probably do as well as they did	0.074	0.174	0.472	0.193	–0.046
P4	Try to see this situation as an opportunity to learn and develop new skills	0.189	0.156	0.461	–0.026	–0.046
A4	Try not to get concerned about it	–0.026	–0.034	0.436	0.291	–0.037
P3	Think about the challenges I can find in this situation	0.306	0.033	0.388	–0.133	0.090
H5	Work on changing policies which caused this situation	0.031	0.283	0.385	–0.011	0.019
P1	Think of ways to use this situation to show what I can do	0.252	0.076	0.356	0.020	0.079
A1	Try to keep away from this type of situation	0.071	0.027	–0.007	0.783	0.047
A2	Avoid being in this situation if I can	–0.077	–0.039	0.036	0.630	–0.008
A5	Tell myself that time takes care of situations like this	0.022	–0.079	0.258	0.541	–0.009
A3	Separate myself as much as possible from the people who created this situation	0.082	–0.038	–0.057	0.446	–0.033
A6	Accept this situation because there is nothing I can do to change it	–0.120	0.135	0.021	0.295	0.102
AC2	Drink more than a moderate amount of liquor, beer or wine	0.007	–0.016	–0.019	0.045	0.886
AC1	Drink more than a moderate amount of liquor, beer or wine	–0.012	0.010	–0.006	–0.006	0.854
Chronbach’s α		0.832	0.837	0.791	0.610	0.863
Rotated Eigenvalues		6.717	2.099	1.275	1.136	0.671
Rotated % Explained variance Total 45.765		25.835	8.073	4.906	4.368	2.582

Equation 1 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy: 0.860. Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Approx. χ² = 2392.847), p = 0.000. D* = Direct action, P^* = Positive-thinking, H^* = Help-seeking, A^* = Avoidance/Resignation, AC^* = Alcohol use items. Items are lined per their factor loadings and bolded for each factor. Post rotation Eigenvalues and Explained variance were described for each subscale.

3.3 Convergent validity

Significantly negative correlations were found between the DS-14 measure and the Latack Coping scales of help-seeking, positive-thinking, and direct action while significant positive correlations were found with the avoidance/resignation scale. The correlation between each subscale and the DS-14 were –0.22 for help-seeking scale, –0.22 for positive-thinking scale, –0.25 for direct action scale, 0.28 for avoidance/resignation scale, and 0.74 for alcohol use scale (all p < .05 except for alcohol use), indicating that more positive coping was associated with stronger levels of type D personality.

3.4 Test-retest reliability

Data for both measurement sessions and reliability data expressed as Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC2, 2) (95% confidence intervals) are described in Table 2. The ICC values for each subscale were 0.72, 0.66, 0.80, 0.72, and 0.77 for the help-seeking, avoidance/resignation, positive-thinking, direct action, and alcohol use scales, respectively, indicating good to excellent test-retest reliability.

Table 2
Measurements recorded from the two evaluation sessions (mean±SD) and corresponding Intra-class Correlational Coefficients (ICC) for each of the five subscales of the Korean version of Latack Coping Scale

Mean±SD

Day 1 Day 2 ICC (95% CI)

Direct action 20.9±4.14 21.4±4.30 0.72 (0.49 to 0.86)^

Positive-thinking 19.1±4.47 19.6±4.21 0.80 (0.62 to 0.90)^

Help-seeking 19.0±4.01 19.2±3.93 0.72 (0.48 to 0.86)^

Avoidance/ 14.6±3.99 15.2±4.14 0.66 (0.40 to 0.82)^

Resignation

Alcohol use 3.57±1.81 3.4±1.89 0.77 (0.57 to 0.88)^**

	Mean±SD
Direct action	20.9±4.14	21.4±4.30	0.72 (0.49 to 0.86)^**
Positive-thinking	19.1±4.47	19.6±4.21	0.80 (0.62 to 0.90)^**
Help-seeking	19.0±4.01	19.2±3.93	0.72 (0.48 to 0.86)^**
Avoidance/	14.6±3.99	15.2±4.14	0.66 (0.40 to 0.82)^**
Resignation
Alcohol use	3.57±1.81	3.4±1.89	0.77 (0.57 to 0.88)^**

^**p < 0.001. The interval between Day 1 and Day 2 was approximately a week. Spearman correlation method with two tailed was applied.

4 Discussion

This new translation has practical application for workers in Korea to assist in the management of work-related psychological distress by providing a coping behaviour assessment. Several theories have been proposed for the development of work-related stress. The most extensively used model developed is the demand-control model developed by Karasek⁸ which posits that the interaction between varying levels of psychological job demands and the workers’ level of control over these demands determines the level of stress risk. Lazarus [37] however, has emphasized the interaction between the worker’s attributes, their coping strategy, and stress environment as the source of stress. This broadly accepted and frequently used transactional approach on stress defines two dimensions of coping strategy: control coping (direct action, problem-focused, active) referred to as “targeting the causes of stress in practical ways”, and escape coping (palliative, emotion-focused, passive, avoidance) referred to as “trying to reduce or ignoring the negative emotional responses caused by stress” [37, 38].

Latack [13] proposed a third dimension of coping (alcohol use) that is related to stressful life experiences, while also acknowledging proactive strategies such as control coping (direct action, positive-thinking, help-seeking) and avoidance strategies such as escape coping (avoidance/resignation). To date the instrument of Latack and colleagues has been the most appropriate instrument to measure coping relating to job stress. However, the important distinction between coping strategy and generic coping style needs to be acknowledged, as well as the impact of the environment in which coping is being assessed. The coping strategy in this instrument describes very specific behaviours to stressful situations at work and is not comparable to the consistent or habitual generic coping style to general stressors, or to a much broader range of stressful situations such as in response to natural disasters or cancer [39].

This study has provided the first Korean version of a stress coping scale specific to the workplace by strictly adhering with the recommended guidelines for cross-cultural adaptation of self-report measures [21]. This new Korean version of the Latack Coping Scale showed good internal consistency, excellent test-retest reliability, accurate factor item loading (five factor loading model) and convergent validity. Similar to previous translation attempts we confronted some difficulties in translating the wording of some items. This problem with vocabulary equivalence happens when a word does not exist in a target language. For example the word “supervisor” is non-existent in the Korean language and hierarchical corporate culture in Korean society made it difficult to identify an appropriate surrogate [40]. The term “supervisor” is often translated to “sang-sa” which in Korean is means “superior or senior co-worker” [41, 42]. However, the pre-final testing identified that the term “sang-sa” may refer to any senior worker in the basis of age or length of service rather than work function/duties/responsibilities. Therefore, in this translation the term “senior manager in responsibility” who is responsible for work-related decision making was used as a surrogate for the term “supervisor”.

Despite challenges with translation, the findings from the factor analysis clearly demonstrated that the five different coping subscales were nearly identical to the original version of the instrument except for two items. Item # H5 which stated “Work on changing policies which caused this situation” loaded on the positive-thinking scale while it was characterized as a help-seeking strategy in the original version. This item, however, was also highly loaded on help-seeking scale and the factor loading scales for both scales were very similar (factor loading of 0.385 on positive-thinking scale compare to 0.283 on help-seeking). Item #A4 which stated “Try not to get concerned about it” also highly loaded on the positive-thinking scale instead of its original allocation on the avoidance/resignation scale (factor loading of 0.436 on the positive-thinking scale and 0.291 on the avoidance/resignation scale). The item #A4 is the only item in the avoidance/resignation scale describing one’s psychological perception to a situation rather than describing one’s physical action or behaviour to a situation. This different aspect of avoidance may have resulted in the weak association with its original allocation. Despite the apparent misclassification of these two items, the moderate-to-high factor loadings throughout all 26 items (ranging from.295 to.883) indicate consistency between items and comparability between the new Korean version of the Latack Coping Scale and the original version [13].

From a clinical perspective, the positive findings from the validity testing of this Korean version of the Latack Coping Scale supports its potential use as an assessment tool for measuring coping strategies in response to workplace stress in the general Korean working population. Work stress is a universal phenomenon and coping strategies are particularly relevant as a mediator of work stress [43]. This intermediate relationship underpins the need for specified instruments to assess coping in the workplace. This Korean version of Latack Coping Scale is a validated assessment tool appraising coping in the workplace and has application for the general working population in Korea.

4.1 Limitations

There were some limitations of the study. Although it has been suggested in the cross-cultural adaptation guidelines to invite the original developer of the instrument, the developer was unable to assist due to time commitments. Nonetheless, we are confident that an accurate reflection of the original questionnaire has been achieved by our strict adherence to all other recommended steps in the guideline. The Avoidance/Resignation scale did not achieve acceptable internal consistency (Chronbach’s α 0.61). Therefore, users should be aware of the lack of coherence among the five items in this scale. The office worker population in this study may exhibit different coping strategies than other occupational groups. In addition, job seniority, age, or gender were not taken into account in this study. Consideration of those factors should be included in future studies.

5 Conclusion

This is the first study to develop and scientifically evaluate a translation of the Latack Coping Scale relevant for Korean society. This instrument was shown to be a reliable and valid translation of the original instrument within a large sample of the Korean working population. We suggest this version of the instrument to be broadly applicable for use in future studies investigating this prominent health issue in Korean society.

Author contributions

Deokhoon Jun: Conception and design of the study, Data acquisition, Data analysis and interpretation, Writing and revision for the paper, Read and approved the final version for submission.

Jun-Mo Kim: Data acquisition, Data analysis and interpretation, Read and approved the final version for submission.

Shaun O’Leary: Conception and design of the study, Data analysis and interpretation, Writing and revision for the paper, Read and approved the final version for submission.

Venerina Johnston: Conception and design of the study, Data analysis and interpretation, Writing and revision for the paper, Read and approved the final version for submission.

Conflict of interest

None to report.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted in the University of Queensland under the doctorate degree course. The authors thank all the subjects who participated in this research. This research was supported by Kyungsung University Research Grants in 2019.

Appendix

Korean Latack Coping Scale (by DH. Jun.)

Original Developer: Dr. Janina C. Latack

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Items #		Factor loadings
		D^*	H^*	P^*	A^*	AC^*
D5	Give it my best effort to do what I think is expected of me	0.883	0.053	–0.239	–0.015	–0.004
D1	Devote more time and energy to doing my job	0.702	–0.120	0.013	0.008	0.029
D6	Try to be very organized so that I can keep on top of things	0.695	0.068	–0.011	0.112	–0.053
D3	Try to work harder and more efficiently	0.649	–0.021	0.172	–0.073	–0.041
D4	Throw myself into my work and work harder, longer hours	0.500	–0.188	0.230	0.001	0.082
D2	Put extra attention on planning and scheduling	0.469	0.004	0.226	0.067	–0.105
H2	Request help from other people who have the power to do something for me	0.008	0.742	–0.085	0.023	0.000
H1	Seek advice from people outside the situation who may not have power but who can help me think of ways to do what is expected of me	0.121	0.727	–0.111	0.022	0.009
H4	Talk with people (other than may supervisor) who are involved	–0.041	0.623	0.071	–0.066	–0.010
H6	Get together with my supervisor to discuss this	–0.283	0.535	0.284	–0.041	–0.020
H3	Decide what I think should be done and explain this to the people who are affected	0.370	0.397	0.063	–0.025	0.046
P5	Try to think of myself as a winner – as someone who always comes through	0.057	–0.027	0.684	–0.035	–0.013
P6	Tell myself that I can probably work things out to my advantage	0.227	–0.086	0.669	–0.110	0.015
P2	Remind myself that other people have been in this situation and that I can probably do as well as they did	0.074	0.174	0.472	0.193	–0.046
P4	Try to see this situation as an opportunity to learn and develop new skills	0.189	0.156	0.461	–0.026	–0.046
A4	Try not to get concerned about it	–0.026	–0.034	0.436	0.291	–0.037
P3	Think about the challenges I can find in this situation	0.306	0.033	0.388	–0.133	0.090
H5	Work on changing policies which caused this situation	0.031	0.283	0.385	–0.011	0.019
P1	Think of ways to use this situation to show what I can do	0.252	0.076	0.356	0.020	0.079
A1	Try to keep away from this type of situation	0.071	0.027	–0.007	0.783	0.047
A2	Avoid being in this situation if I can	–0.077	–0.039	0.036	0.630	–0.008
A5	Tell myself that time takes care of situations like this	0.022	–0.079	0.258	0.541	–0.009
A3	Separate myself as much as possible from the people who created this situation	0.082	–0.038	–0.057	0.446	–0.033
A6	Accept this situation because there is nothing I can do to change it	–0.120	0.135	0.021	0.295	0.102
AC2	Drink more than a moderate amount of liquor, beer or wine	0.007	–0.016	–0.019	0.045	0.886
AC1	Drink more than a moderate amount of liquor, beer or wine	–0.012	0.010	–0.006	–0.006	0.854
Chronbach’s α		0.832	0.837	0.791	0.610	0.863
Rotated Eigenvalues		6.717	2.099	1.275	1.136	0.671
Rotated % Explained variance Total 45.765		25.835	8.073	4.906	4.368	2.582

	Mean±SD
	Day 1	Day 2	ICC (95% CI)
Direct action	20.9±4.14	21.4±4.30	0.72 (0.49 to 0.86)^**
Positive-thinking	19.1±4.47	19.6±4.21	0.80 (0.62 to 0.90)^**
Help-seeking	19.0±4.01	19.2±3.93	0.72 (0.48 to 0.86)^**
Avoidance/	14.6±3.99	15.2±4.14	0.66 (0.40 to 0.82)^**
Resignation
Alcohol use	3.57±1.81	3.4±1.89	0.77 (0.57 to 0.88)^**