Stress and coping by adolescents in the Youth Connectedness Project Paul Jose, Senior Researcher Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families - October 2007

Why study this topic? The study of stress, coping, and adjustment in adolescents is important because adolescence is a period of transitions and changes, both psychologically and physically. Considerable research devoted to this topic: “sturm und drang”? Identity (Erikson) Risk factors that predict later adjustment (risk and resilience) Stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman)

What can we learn? I like to study stress, coping, and adjustment all together. In other words, they are three elements in a dynamic process and we should study them together. How should we conceptualise this dynamic?

The mediational approach Stressful events Psychological adjustment Coping Social support Problem-solving Rumination Externalising Avoidance Resilience

The moderational approach Stressful events Psychological adjustment Coping Social support Problem-solving Rumination Externalising Avoidance Resilience

The variables Stress: “Thinking back over the last 12 months, how many problems have you had in each of the following areas of your life?...School, Family, Friends, Body.” (5 pts) Coping: –Resilience: :My belief in myself gets me through hard times” –Social support: “I talk to others about how I am feeling” –Problem-solving: “I try to change the situation to solve the problem”

More variables Coping: –Externalising: “I get into fights or argue with people” –Avoidance: “I avoid dealing with my problems” –Rumination: “I think "why can't I handle things better?“ Negative Affect: “I could not stop feeling bad, even when others tried to cheer me up” Life Aspirations: “I often think about my future (what I want to do with my life)” Life Satisfaction: “ I am happy with my life”

Descriptive statistics VariableRangeMeanPoint on scale Stress “a few” to “some” Resilience “neutral” to “agree” Social support “neutral” to “agree” Problem-solving “neutral” to “agree” Avoidance “disagree” to “neutral” Externalising “disagree” to “neutral” Rumination “disagree” to “neutral” Negative affect days out of 7 Life aspirations “agree” to “agree strongly” Life satisfaction “agree” to “agree strongly”

Moderation Since we don’t have longitudinal data (yet), I choose to examine moderational relationships at this time. Moderation tells us under what conditions the basic relationship may exist. Basic relationships: –Stress to Negative Affect –Stress to Life Aspirations –Stress to Life Satisfaction I expected that stress would be negatively related to the positive outcomes and positively related to the negative outcome.

Basic relationships: Stress predicting 3 DVs Dependent variable BetaSignif.R2R2 Negative affect Life aspirations Life satisfaction

Coping predicting Neg Affect Moderator variable BetaSignif.R2R2 Rumination Externalis- ing Avoidance All are maladaptive coping strategies.

Coping predicting Life Aspirations Moderator variable BetaSignificanceR2R2 Resilience Social support Problem-solving Avoidance Externalising Rumination Note that rumination is a positive predictor.

Coping predicting Life Satisfaction Moderator variable BetaSignificanceR2R2 Resilience Social support Problem-solving Avoidance Externalising Rumination Rumination is a negative predictor in this case.

Adaptive coping strategies generally positively predicted positive outcomes Maladaptive coping strategies generally negatively predicted positive outcomes Adaptive coping strategies predicted considerable variance in Life Aspirations and Life Satisfaction; maladaptive strategies did not. Adaptive coping strategies did NOT predict any variance in Negative Affect. Rumination has a paradoxical influence: positive for Life Aspirations, negative for Life Satisfaction, and positive for Negative Affect. What have we learned?

Okay, how do these coping strategies affect the basic relationships between stress and the three DVs? Under what conditions do these main effects occur? Eight significant moderation results were obtained across these 18 regressions. I won’t present all of them, but here are several of the most interesting ones. Moderation by coping strategies

Stress to Negative Affect moderated by Resilience Low resilience under conditions of high stress is associated with higher negative affect. Resilience buffers against stress, particularly under high stress.

Stress to Life Aspirations moderated by Avoidance Avoidance doesn’t make any difference under high stress (all low), but under low stress someone who avoids problems reports lower aspirations. Highest aspirations: low stress/low avoidance.

Stress to Life Aspirations moderated by Rumination Remember that rumination positively predicted life aspirations. This graph shows that high rumination has a buffering effect, particularly under conditions of high stress.

Stress to Life Satisfaction moderated by Social Support Social support has the greatest buffering effect under conditions of high stress.

Stress to Life Satisfaction moderated by Rumination Rumination negatively predicts life satisfaction. Rumination makes no difference under the condition of high stress, but under low stress a high ruminator reports lower life satisfaction than a low ruminator.

I (and others) have seen that stress and other negative experiences increase from pre-adolescent through late adolescent years: the so-called “storm and stress” years. Further, I expected to find gender differences for some of these variables as well. Girls tend to show worse adjustment starting about age years. Let’s change gears: Did these variables change over this age range and/or differ by gender?

Stress depicted by gender and age Males are pretty steady, but females increased in their reports of stress. Females greater than males starting at age 12 years.

Negative Affect depicted by gender and age Males decrease in negative affect, but females stay pretty stable.

It’s concerning that everyone decreases in life aspirations over time, females especially so. Life aspirations depicted by gender and age

No gender difference, but there is a marked decrease with age. Life satisfaction depicted by gender and age

Rumination depicted by gender and age Marked decrease by males and a slight increase by females.

Girls show an inclination to report higher negative outcomes (stress, negaff) after about age 12 years. –Puberty and hormones? –Changing social roles? –More demands? I’m interested in whether connectedness buffers the impact of these forces—analyses yet to be done. In particular, are stressors in the four domains (school, family, friends, body) buffered by connectedness in relevant four domains (school, family, friends, community)? What do these results indicate?

Girls’ ratings of problems with body Boys go down with age whereas girls show a steady increase over age. The pattern in the family area is similar so it’s not all about puberty, it seems.

I’ve only had enough time here to tantalise you with some interesting and intriguing findings. Sorry that there’s no clear policy implications coming out of this (yet). Are there particular analyses that you’d be interested in? Much more to do