The Regret Coping Scale for Health-Care Professionals (RCS-HCP): A validation study with Danish social educators

BACKGROUND: Coping with regret has a substantial impact on wellbeing and mental health, but has rarely been investigated in an occupational setting.

OBJECTIVE: To translate the Regret Coping Scale for Health-Care Professionals (RCS-HCP) and explore internal consistency, construct-, criterion- and predictive validity.

METHODS: The instrument was translated using forward- back method. The qualities were evaluated with a sample of 2758 social educators using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as well as Cronbach's alpha, Pearson correlation, and multivariable regression.

RESULTS: The translated instrument showed a trend similar to the original instrument. A 10-item version resulted from the research being reported. The reduced RCS-HCP showed improved fit (Full model, 15 items); CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.89, RMSEA = 0.66, PClose = 0.000 and BIC = 1392 vs. (Reduced instrument, 10 items); CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.05, PClose = 0.499 and BIC 307. This instrument had acceptable internal consistency for short scales (Cronbach's alpha = 0.65, 0.69 and 0.84 respectively). The subscales correlated as expected with measures of health and occupational factors, coefficient ranging from 0.182 to 0.399. Also, the RCS-HCP predicted stress three month later ΔF[3,2747] = 15.1, p < 0.001, but with very small effect ΔR2 = 0.01, p≤0.001.

CONCLUSIONS: The 10-item Danish version of the RCS-HCP is a valid instrument for measuring coping with regret in health related work.