The relationship of arthritis self-efficacy to daily pain, daily mood, and daily pain coping in rheumatoid arthritis patients

There is an increasing awareness in the medical community that psychosocial variables such as beliefs in self-efficacy are important determinants of treatment outcome. However, before measures of self-efficacy are widely incorporated into clinical practice, there needs to be a better understanding of how they relate to daily pain, mood and coping. In the present study 128 rheumatoid arthritis patients completed diaries for 30 days in which they provided daily ratings of joint pain, negative and positive mood, the use of pain coping strategies, and coping efficacy. The patients then participated in an evaluation session during which measures of self-efficacy (the Arthritis Self Efficacy Scale (ASES)), demographic variables, and medical status were collected. A series of hierarchical regression analyses was conducted to determine the degree to which self-efficacy measures collected at the time of the evaluation session were related to daily diary measures collected during the 30 preceding days. The results revealed that self-efficacy was significantly related to daily ratings of pain, mood, coping and coping efficacy. Interestingly, the findings regarding self-efficacy were obtained even after taking into account the effects of important demographic and medical status variables. Taken together, these results suggest that self-efficacy ratings collected from arthritis patients at the time of an evaluation session may well be related to recent experiences of daily pain and mood, as well as the daily use and perceived effectiveness of pain coping strategies.