Helping Students Make Informed Choices About College
Category: Pathways to and Through Postsecondary
Instrument Overview
Expert Notes AvailableView expert commentary on strengths and cautions for this instrument
Strengths
Brief items capturing adaptive responses to stress across academic contexts. Predictive validity for resilience-related health and academic outcomes in prior studies
Cautions
Original validation focused more on health than academic populations. May oversimplify complex, context-dependent coping processes.
The Shift-and-Persist instrument was developed by Edith Chen to operationalize adaptive coping strategies among individuals facing adversity. The questionnaire consists of two subscales—shift (cognitive reappraisal and secondary control coping) and persist (purpose in life, optimism, and future orientation)—originally measured with 5 items each on a 4-point Likert scale, along with distractor items. Following factor analysis, the final instrument included 4 shift and 4 persist items, which loaded onto two distinct factors across both parents and adolescents, explaining about 60% of the variance.
Psychometric analyses showed adequate internal consistency (α ≈ .80 for shift; .64–.73 for persist) and clear construct validity, with shift correlating with reappraisal and secondary coping, and persist correlating strongly with purpose in life and optimism. The two-factor structure was consistent across populations, and patterns of convergent and divergent validity supported the interpretation of shift and persist as related but distinct dimensions of resilience-related coping.
Organization
Collection Category(ies)
Content
Grades
Post secondary
Languages
English
Administration Information
Length
Less than 3 minutes
Access and Use
Developer
Edith Chen and Gregory E. Miller, University of British Columbia
Contact
edith.chen@northwestern.edu
Open Access
Yes
Use in Research
Chen, E., McLean, K. C., & Miller, G. E. (2015). Shift-and-Persist strategies: Associations With socioeconomic status and the regulation of inflammation among adolescents and their parents. Psychosomatic Medicine, 77(4), 371–382.
Psychometrics (additional guidance)
Psychometric References
Chen, E., & Miller, G. E. (2012). “Shift-and-persist” strategies: Why low socioeconomic status isn’t always bad for health. Perspectives on psychological science, 7(2), 135-158.
Chen, E., Miller, G. E., Lachman, M. E., Gruenewald, T. L., & Seeman, T. E. (2012). Protective factors for adults from low-childhood socioeconomic circumstances: The benefits of shift-and-persist for allostatic load. Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine, 74(2), 178-186.
Populations of Validation
The instrument was tested with early adolescents (approximately ages 13–16) and one of their parents, drawn from a socioeconomically diverse sample with an emphasis on lower-SES families. The sample included racially and ethnically diverse participants (primarily White and African American families) and was balanced across gender in the adolescent group.
