The social coping questionnaire: An examination of its structure with an American sample of gifted adolescents

Gifted students report that they are often perceived differently than nonidentified students (Cross, Coleman, & Stewart, 1993); thus, they employ social coping strategies to manipulate the visibility of their giftedness. The Social Coping Questionnaire (SCQ; Swiatek, 1995) was designed to assess these strategies. This study's purpose was to examine the SCQ's factor structure with a sample of 600 younger (grades 5- 7) and older (grades 8-11) gifted boys and girls in the U.S. and determine the tenability of the factor structure across age and gender groups. Participants' scores were randomly assigned to either exploratory factor analysis (EFA) or confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Findings from EFA were tested with CFA. Together, these analyses revealed 6 factors. Factor loading patterns from multigroup analyses indicated differences between age and gender groups, and suggested that future investigations of gifted students'social coping strategies include careful examination of the data for factor structure changes that are unique to the sample.