Coping Strategies in Sport Questionnaire (CFQ) Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Never
- Almost never
- Rarely
- Often
- Almost always
- Never
- Almost never
- Rarely
- Often
- Almost always
- Never
- Almost never
- Rarely
- Often
- Almost always
Coping Strategies in Sport Questionnaire (CFQ) Test - Description and methodology of the test
For athletes and active people who want to understand their responses under pressure, the Coping Strategies in Sport Questionnaire (CFQ) Test offers a structured way to examine demanding sport experiences. The profile can help a person reflect on sport coping strategies during training, competition, or team situations, and consider how context may shape their responses.
What This Assessment Measures
The questionnaire examines responses to sporting pressure, setbacks, conflict, and difficult demands. It suits people who want to recognize whether they tend to avoid a problem, work with emotion, or address the situation directly. The profile describes coping tendencies.
The three result dimensions are:
- Problem Avoidance (1-5) reflects avoidance or denial; Low avoidance 1-3.1; High avoidance 3.2-5.
- Emotion-Focused Coping (1-5) reflects controlling or expressing emotion without resolving the underlying problem; Low 1-2.4; Moderate 2.5-4; High 4.1-5.
- Problem-Focused Coping (1-5) reflects planning, seeking information or help, and active resolution; Low 1-1.9; Moderate 2-3.7; High 3.8-5.
Taken together, these dimensions show which responses are more prominent in the situations described. The profile is best read as a pattern of tendencies across situations.
Methodology and Scientific Basis
Each item is a first-person statement about a stressful situation, answered on five options from Never to Almost always. The wording covers changing circumstances, avoiding them, reinterpreting stress, and managing emotions, so the questionnaire records reported coping behavior rather than an abstract personality type.
The questionnaire reports separate results for the three coping dimensions. The bands are descriptive ranges, not universal cutoffs, and a higher result is not automatically better.
The questionnaire is conceptually consistent with the Coping Function Questionnaire (Kowalski & Crocker, 2001), which organizes sport-coping responses by function. It also reflects Lazarus and Folkman’s appraisal-and-coping framework, where coping involves managing demands and related emotions. The published study supports the conceptual grouping, but this online self-report version should not be read as having the same validation or norms; memory, current mood, social desirability, and self-awareness can also shape its results.
Different strategies may appear in the same person within coping in sport because demands change across training, competition, and relationships. Read the profile alongside the specific situation and recent experience.
- Kowalski, Kent C., and Peter R. E. Crocker. "Development and Validation of the Coping Function Questionnaire for Adolescents in Sport." Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology 23, no. 2 (2001): 136-155. 10.1123/jsep.23.2.136
- Lazarus, Richard S., and Susan Folkman. Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1984.
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