Coping Strategies of Adolescents: Predictor Variables

청소년의 긴장에 대한 대처전략과 관련변인

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.