Typical symptoms of rheumatic disease affect overall daily living and cause severe stress. Individuals afflicted with rheumatic disease have many illness-related stresses. Pain was the predominantly perceived stress followed by limitation in mobility, difficulties in carrying out activities of daily living. helplessness, dependency on others, threat to self-esteem, interference in social activity, interference in family relationships. difficulties performing at work, and discomfort of the treatment. Patients with chronic arthritis are subjected to long periods of continuous stress, which may require the management by the health care provider. In these cases, the purpose of the nursing is helping to promote health through supporting patient's coping. Therefore, for the nursing intervention to be effective, it is critical to build a theoretical framework that describes stress-coping for chronic arthritis. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is to present a theoretical framework which describes the stress-coping processes and to empirically test pathos of this framework for the people with chronic arthritis. The foundation upon which this framework is built in the Erickson, Tomlin, and Swain(1983) theory of Modeling and role-Modeling. The subjects were 275 patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis who visited the outpatient clinic. A hypothetical model of stress-coping was tested by covariance structure analysis with PC-LISREL 8.12 program. As a result, the overall fit was good(Chi-square=94.49, P=0.00, RMR=0.067, GFI=0.95, AGFI=0.91, NNFI=0.93, NFI=0.91) for the hypothetical model. The results of hypothesis testing were as follows : Basic need satisfaction had a statistically significant influence on illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resources. Internal health locus of control had a statistically significant influence on coping resources. However, independent variables(basic need satisfaction, internal health locus of control, illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resource) did not have significantly influence on coping. And then, the hypothetical model was modified by considering both the theoretical implication and statistical significance of the parameter estimates. The revised model had a better fit to the data(Chi-square=83.11(P=0.00), RMR=0.061, GFI=0.96, AGFI=0.92, NNFI=0.95, NFI=0.92). Hypothesis emerged from the revised model was tested. The results of hypothesis testing were as follows : Basic need satisfaction had a statistically significant influence on illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resources. Internal health locus of control had a statistically significant influence on illness-related experience and coping resources. Internal health locus of control, illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resources had a significantly influence on coping. According to the results of this dissertation, basic need satisfaction and internal health locus of control play a central role in appraisal of illness-related experience and coping resources. And illness related-experience, emotional stress, and coping resources affect on coping activities. In summary, nursing interventions to enhance basic need satisfaction and internal health locus of control will decrease illness related experience and emotional stress and increase coping resources. Increased coping resources will prompt coping activities.