Adolescent Coping With Stress: Dimensions, Structure And Correlation Factors

Coping, as the mediators or moderators between stress and adjustment or psychopathology, has an important effect on individuals' physical and mental health. Since 1970, adults coping researches have developed gradually in wide world, above all in theory and measurement. However, adult researches cannot fit for adolescent. In spite of the rapid growth of this area of foreign research in the early 1990, there are few researches on adolescents in China.The purpose of the research is developing the Adolescent Coping with Stress Scale (ACSS) fit for Chinese adolescents based on adolescent coping theory, opened question, previous researches, pretest, expert assessing et al. The dimensions and structure of the ACSS were examined through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) & confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). At the same time, the characteristic of adolescent coping and the relation between adolescent coping strategies and subjective well-being (SWB), mental health were examined. The results showed,1. There are 17 strategies in adolescent coping with stress, i.e., Involuntary and impulsive action, problem solving, seeking social support, humor, wishful thinking, denial, self-blame, distraction, avoidance / numbing, tolerance / acceptance, keep calmness, suppression, self-relaxing, recognition, intrusive thoughts, emotional puzzle, physiologic arousal.2. The ASCS is a hierarchical model. The primary dimension in this model distinguishes between positive and negative coping with stress. Both positive and negative coping is further distinguished on a second dimension of problem- or emotion-focused coping with stress.3. The internal consistency reliabilities (Cronbach's alphas) and half-split reliabilities for the 17 parcels and fours factors of the ASCS are summarized. The validity of the ASCS was examined, including content validity, structure validity, convergent and discriminant validity. Findings showed reliabilities and validities were adequate to excellent.4. Findings showed that the diversity and individual differences of the ways that adolescents cope with stress, and the coping strategies were different from grade, gender, achievement and the controllability of the situation.5. Positive coping, above all positive problem-focused coping, have been found to be associated with better SWB and mental health, whereas negative coping, above all negative emotional-focused coping, are linked to poorer SWB and mental health.