hat the elicited expectancies were neither dose-specific, nor situation specific.Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). The PSS (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983) is a 14 item self-report questionnaire designed to assess the degree to which situations in one's life are appraised as stressful. An equal number of 7 positive and 7 negative statements make up the questionnaire. Assessment is based on a five point scale from 0=never to 4=very often. Scores are obtained by reversing the scores on the seven positive items (i.e., 0=4, 1=3, 2=2, etc.), and then summing across all 14 items. COPEThe COPE (Carver et al., 1989) is a 53 item self-report questionnaire designed to assess individual coping dispositions. The questionnaire is comprised of 14 scales which are categorized into three coping styles: Problem-Focused Coping (Active coping, Planning, Suppression of competing activities, Seeking social support for instrumental reasons, and Restraint coping), Emotion-Focused Coping (Acceptance, Seeking social support for emotional reasons, Positive reinterpretation, Turning to religion, and Focus on and venting of emotion), and Less than Useful Coping (Denial, Behavioral Disengagement, and Mental Disengagement). For the purpose of the present study the Alcohol-drug disengagement scale was excluded from these categories, and was treated as a separate category called Drinking to Cope. Assessment is based on a four point scale from1=I usually don't do this at all to 4=I usually do this a lot. Both items and instructions were worded such that dispositional , rather than situational, styles of coping were assessed. ProcedureAll participants were recruited from undergraduate psychology courses at York University. The questionnaire was administered in a classroom setting. Participants completed the questionnaire in a group format of mixed sex ranging in size from 10 to 30 individuals. Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and a phone number was ...
