Stress resilience
Brief COPE questionnaire: what it measures and how to read it
28 statements, 14 coping strategies, no total score. This page explains where the Brief COPE comes from, how to read a result, and how the instrument differs from the UCL — without offering the latter.
In short
The Brief COPE is a shortened version of the coping questionnaire Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub published in 1989. Carver reduced it in 1997 to 28 statements that together score 14 coping strategies, each with two items. You read the result per strategy — as a scale average between 1 and 4 — not as one total score. A high score on a strategy is not good or bad; which strategy works depends on the situation.
Origin of the Brief COPE
Charles Carver, Michael Scheier, and Jagdish Weintraub published the original COPE in 1989: 60 items across 15 scales. In practice, that length was a barrier — a 60-statement administration takes time that not every study or questionnaire battery has.
Carver shortened the questionnaire in 1997 to 28 items: two per scale, 14 scales in total, with one scale from the original version dropped. That shortened version is the Brief COPE — the instrument Innerscape uses, and the one that has since become the most widely used coping instrument in research worldwide.
The 14 scales
Each scale consists of two statements and measures one specific way of dealing with stress. Researchers often group the 14 scales into three clusters — problem-focused, emotion-focused, and avoidant — but the Brief COPE itself scores them separately. To see what each strategy looks like in an everyday situation, read the coping styles with examples.
Active Coping
Taking direct steps to remove or reduce the source of the stress.
Planning
Working out an approach or sequence of steps before acting.
Instrumental Support
Asking people who can actually contribute for advice or concrete help.
Positive Reframing
Looking at the situation so that a silver lining or lesson becomes visible.
Acceptance
Treating the situation as a given instead of fighting or denying it.
Humor
Easing the tension by not taking the situation or yourself too seriously.
Religion/Spirituality
Seeking comfort, direction, or strength in faith or a spiritual belief.
Emotional Support
Turning to others for understanding and comfort, not necessarily a solution.
Venting
Naming anger, sadness, or frustration out loud instead of bottling it up.
Self-Distraction
Doing something else for a while so your attention leaves the problem.
Denial
Refusing to acknowledge that the situation or problem is really there.
Substance Use
Using alcohol or other substances to make the situation more bearable.
Behavioural Disengagement
Giving up the attempt to do anything about the situation.
Self-Blame
Holding yourself responsible for what happened.
How to read a score
Each scale gets its own average: the mean of the two statements belonging to that scale, on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (a lot). There is no single total score summarizing all 14 scales — the Brief COPE measures a profile, not one number.
Innerscape converts that scale average into a percentile relative to a norm group, so you can see whether your score on a strategy is relatively high, average, or low compared with others who completed the same questionnaire.
A high percentile is not a seal of approval, and a low percentile is not a shortcoming: a high score on Substance Use is not good news, and a high score on Active Coping is not inherently better than a high score on Acceptance. What a score means depends on the situation you had in mind while answering.
The Utrecht Coping List (UCL) and the Brief COPE: the difference
Like the Brief COPE, the Utrecht Coping List (UCL) is a self-report questionnaire about how you deal with problems and stressful events, but it is a Dutch instrument. The original UCL (Schreurs, Van de Willige, Brosschot, Tellegen, and Graus; manual 1993) has 47 items across seven scales, with three items outside any scale. The revised UCL-R (Schreurs and Van de Willige, Pearson, 2023) keeps 47 items and sorts all of them into six scales: active tackling, seeking social support, expressing negative emotions, seeking distraction, passive/avoidance, and optimism. The Brief COPE has 28 items across 14 scales.
| Authors and year | Items | Scales | Published as | At Innerscape | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brief COPE | Carver (1997); a shortened version of Carver, Scheier & Weintraub (1989) | 28 | 14, two items each | Article in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine | Free, standalone on the coping test and inside the full assessment. |
| UCL (Utrecht Coping List) | Schreurs, Van de Willige, Brosschot, Tellegen & Graus (1993) | 47 | 7; three items outside any scale | Dutch manual, Swets & Zeitlinger | This questionnaire is not offered by Innerscape — only the Brief COPE, free on the coping test. |
| UCL-R (revised edition) | Schreurs & Van de Willige (2023) | 47 | 6; every item in a scale | Pearson; only for professionals with the required qualification, Dutch norms for ages 14 to 67 | This questionnaire is not offered by Innerscape — only the Brief COPE, free on the coping test. |
Why Innerscape uses the Brief COPE and not the UCL
Innerscape deliberately does not administer the UCL and uses the Brief COPE instead. Pearson supplies the UCL-R only to professionals with the required qualification, which does not fit an open online test for everyone; its norms are Dutch, while Innerscape works in Dutch and English; and the Brief COPE distinguishes 14 strategies where the UCL-R has six. To find out how you deal with stress yourself, take the Brief COPE free on the coping test.
Filling in the questionnaire
This page explains the Brief COPE; you fill it in on the Innerscape Coping Test. It has you complete the full questionnaire free and with no account: 28 statements, about four minutes, with your scores on all 14 strategies shown immediately.
Sources
Carver, C. S. (1997). You want to measure coping but your protocol’s too long: Consider the Brief COPE. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4(1), 92–100.
Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(2), 267–283.
Schreurs, P. J. G., Van de Willige, G., Brosschot, J. F., Tellegen, B., & Graus, G. M. H. (1993). De Utrechtse Coping Lijst: UCL. Omgaan met problemen en gebeurtenissen. Swets & Zeitlinger.
Schreurs, P. J. G., & Van de Willige, G. (2023). UCL-R: Utrechtse Coping Lijst – herziene editie. Handleiding. Pearson.
Written by Remco Volmer, founder of Innerscape.
Discover Innerscape’s online personality test — eight scientific tests combined into one AI profile.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Brief COPE measure?+
The Brief COPE measures which of 14 coping strategies you use to deal with stress, setbacks, or a difficult period — from actively making a plan to seeking distraction or asking for help. It says nothing about how much stress you have, only about how you handle it.
How many questions does the Brief COPE have?+
28 statements: two per coping strategy, across 14 strategies. A full administration takes about four minutes.
Is the Brief COPE the same as the UCL?+
No. The UCL (Utrecht Coping List) is a Dutch questionnaire with 47 items; the revised UCL-R from 2023 sorts them into six scales. The Brief COPE has 28 items and 14 scales. The UCL-R is administered through professionals; Innerscape offers only the Brief COPE, not the UCL.
Where can I fill in the coping questionnaire?+
On the Innerscape coping test. It has you complete the full Brief COPE free and with no account, with your scores on all 14 strategies shown immediately.
Is the Brief COPE reliable?+
Yes, provided you use it for what it was built for: a snapshot of your coping in a specific situation, not a fixed trait. The scales have been widely studied since Carver published the questionnaire in 1997 and are used internationally.
What does a high score on a scale mean?+
That you used that strategy relatively often in the situation you had in mind while answering. A high score is not automatically good or bad — which strategy helps depends on the situation itself.