Religious coping and resilience in parents of children with special needs.

The purpose of this study is to find out whether the process of resilience in parents of children with special needs can be explained by the transactional model of stress by Lazarus (1990). It also aims to investigate the role of religious coping within this group of parents. Exploratory Factor Analysis of the Brief COPE scale revealed four factors: Problem-focused, social support, emotion-focused, and religious-coping. Problem-focused and religious coping positively predicted the outcomes of wellbeing and health, whereas emotion-focused coping negatively predicted the outcomes. Hierarchical regression showed few full mediation effects, and mostly partially mediation effects, between predictors and the outcomes. A comparison of ethnic and religious groups yielded few significant differences in terms of coping responses and outcome.Bachelor of Art