Coping Strategies of Adolescents : Predictor Variables
Moon Ja Chung,Hyun Sook Chung
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate adolescents` coping strategies to various stressors, and to examine factors that related to their coping strategies. The subjects of the study were 355 middle school and 398 high school students. Adolescents` coping strategy was examined with a revision of the Family Crisis Oriented Personal Scale (McCubbin, Olson, & Larson, 1982). Quality of life was measured by an 11-item scale selected from Quality of Life (Olson & Barnes, 1982) in the areas of family, friend, relationship with relatives, and health and community. Parent-adolescent communication was divided into two dimensions of open communication and problem communication, using Parent-Adolescent Communication(Barnes & Olson, 1982). A measure of the self-esteem of adolescents was obtained by using selected items from the Self-Esteem Inventory(Coopersmith, 1967) and Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965). Five types of coping strategies were found. These are "help from relatives/neighbors", "help from families", "self-help", "help from friends", and "help from religion". Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine significant predictor variables for adolescents` coping strategies. Sex, age, quality of parent-adolescent communication, family cohesion and adaptability, religion, and self-esteem were found important in predicting the types of coping strategies by adolescents.