The Influence Of Middle School Students' Cognitive Appraisals On Coping Strategies Encountering Stressful Academic Situations

Cognitive appraisals mediate the influence of stressful situations on coping strategies. And the specific cognitive appraisals elicit the specific coping strategies in the specific stressful situations. It was indicated by many studies that academic stress is the most important among all their encounters for our middle school students. So it is necessary to know what cognition is elicited and what coping strategy is used when students suffer from specific stress situation.In the present study, the hypothesis is proposed that what coping strategy is used by our middle school students depends on what cognitive appraisal of a sstressful specific situation is encountered by them.The present study procedures are as following: from literature analysis to proposing the studying question and hypothesis, and to designing and implementing the studying plan, and to analysis of studying outcomes and confirmation of the hypothesis . Furthermore, three methods are used in the present study, that is to say, the question and hypothesis in the study are proposed through analyzing literatures, and the hypothesis is confirmed by either conducting questionaire or testing and assessing the stressful academic situations (TASAS) designed. The following conclusions are obtained in the present study:1. The designed questionaire ------middle school students' cognitive appraisal onstressful academic situations questionnaire------owns the acceptable reliability andvalidity.2. Cognitive appraisals on academic stressor for middle school students are composed of three correlative factors: competence appraisal, challenge appraisal, and...