Partners’ Dyadic Coping in India: Psychometric Properties and Validity of the Tamil Version of the Dyadic Coping Inventory

Research outside of India suggests that romantic partners can help one another cope with these stressors by engaging in dyadic coping; however, to date, there lacks an empirically validated self-report measure to assess perceptions of one’s own and their partner’s behaviors in the Indian cultural context. While the Dyadic Coping Inventory has been translated into 24 languages, it has not yet been validated for use with individuals in India. The purpose of this study was to translate and validate the DCI in Tamil, one of the widely spoken languages in India, using data from 931 (n _men = 431 men; n _women = 500) married individuals in different-gender relationships. The factorial structure and measurement invariance (MI) were tested across genders (Indian men and women) and cultures (India, Switzerland, and the United States). Results supported the five-factor structure for the self and partner subscales and a two-factor structure for common dyadic coping. MI analysis indicated the DCI subscales showed configural, full metric and partial scalar invariance across gender (male vs. female in Indian sample) and culture (Indian vs. Swiss and Indian vs. the US). Implications for cross-cultural research and future directions are presented.