Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to develop a scale for measuring junior high school students' stress coping style when they are unable to fulfill assignments in physical education. First, in order to select the items for the present scale, coping descriptions were collected from previous studies of stress coping. Factor analysis of data from 827 junior high school students resulted in a Stress Coping Scale for Junior High School Students in Physical Education Classes (SCS-PE) consisting of 26 items, which had 3 subcategorized factors:“searching for strategy,”“avoidant thoughts and behavior,” and “mental stability.” The reliability of the new test was examined through Cronbach's α, using the test-retest method. The resulting coefficient was satisfactory, thus the test's reliability was verified. Furthermore, the test's validity was also verified in the following subcategorized respects: construct validity, criterion-related validity, cross validity, and discriminant validity. The present results show that the SCS-PE is a reliable and valid scale for measuring junior high school students' stress coping style when they are unable to fulfill physical education assignments. On the basis of the means and standard deviations found for the SCS-PE, evaluative norms were established as 5-point ratings.
