Can people remember how they coped? Factors associated with discordance between same-day and retrospective reports.

Abstract

Using alternate forms derived from 6 scales from the Revised Ways of Coping Checklist (P. P. Vitaliano, 1993), the authors obtained daily coping scores from students as they prepared for a demanding test, then obtained a 7-day retrospective measure of their coping. On average, only 25% shared variance was found between the daily and retrospective accounts. A consistent pattern of retrospective overestimation of daily coping occurred, and large individual differences in degree of correspondence were observed. Among students who reported the highest level of exam-related stress, less than 10% of the retrospective coping score variance was predicted by the daily measures. The results indicate that retrospective coping reports cannot be considered equivalent to measures obtained in closer proximity to the event.