The participating schools established temporary e-mail addresses for the pupils. An electronic edition of the questionnaire was distributed to those mail addresses in October 2012. When the children had answered and send their questionnaire, the e-mail addresses were closed for further use. A teacher was present in the classroom when the children worked with the questionnaire.
Results
In the empirical analysis, our two research questions are:
• How does the use of different coping techniques affect satisfaction with life?
• Are there differences between boys and girls in the use of coping techniques?
The respondents have answered questions about how often they use different coping techniques, and indicated on a five-point scale how often they use each of the techniques (1=never, 2=almost never, 3=sometimes, 4=for the most part, 5=always). The questionnaire contained a battery of 17 different coping techniques, but we have only used nine of these questions in our analysis.
Based on principal component analysis of the answers, we were able to find three interpretable components of coping techniques. We then constructed three different scales based on the items of each component, each scale representing what we can call a coping style. Table 1 (next page) shows the items and the value of Cronbach’s α of each scale. Two of the scales have acceptable values of Cronbach’s α, while the third scale has a barely acceptable value.
There are different approaches to the classification of coping techniques (for an overview, see Weiten, Dunn & Hammer 2012: 98-127). In our analysis, we have distinguished between constructive and non-constructive coping techniques. The main characteristic of constructive coping techniques is that they are task relevant and action oriented (Kleinke 2007).
We have also distinguished between coping techniques that involved emotions
and coping techniques that did not involve emotions. Based on the results of the principal component analysis, we have only applied this distinction to the non-constructive coping techniques.
The first scale represents a constructive coping style. According to Moos and Billings (1982) there are three categories of constructive coping techniques, appraisal-focused coping, problem focused coping and emotion focused coping. The items on the first scale seem to include all of these coping strategies. A high score on this scale means that the respondent attempts to deal with the problem directly, and seeks social support in addition. A low score on this scale represents an absence of such active coping strategies.
The second and the third scale represent a non-constructive coping style, with no active attempts of coping.
The second scale involves negative
emotions, while the third scale represents withdrawal with no emotions involved.
Table 1 compares the scores of boys and girls on all three scales. An independent samples t-test shows that girls have significantly higher scores on the scales for constructive coping techniques as well as the non-constructive emotional coping techniques (sig.=0.01).
However, there are no significant differences between boys and girls on the scale for non-constructive non-emotional coping techniques.
Table 1 also shows that the scale for constructive coping techniques has the highest mean, indicating that this scale represents the most used coping techniques. Non-emotional non-constructive coping seems to be the least utilized coping technique. Paired samples t-tests also show that the differences are significant (sig. 0.01).
Table 1. Scale construction, items and Cronbach’s a.
How does the use of coping techniques affect satisfaction with life? Satisfaction with life is measured on a scale from 0 to 10. The mean is 7.60 and the median is 8.00 for the whole sample. The mean is well above the midpoint of the scale. This is in accordance with the findings one usually gets when using measurement scales for life satisfaction, happiness, etc.
(Weiten et al. 2012). Boys have a slightly higher mean score on life satisfaction than girls (7.79 against 7.37), but this difference is not significant in our sample.
It is reasonable to assume that constructive coping will have a positive effect on life satisfaction, and that non-constructive coping styles will have negative effects on life satisfaction. For our data, however, correlation analysis shows only a negative significance between scale 2 and (non-constructive emotional coping) and overall life satisfaction. There are no significant
correlations between the other scales and life satisfaction. The expected correlation between constructive coping and life satisfaction seems not to be present.
There are, however, significant correlations between the scales. The correlation between scale 1 (constructive coping) and scale 2 (non-constructive emotional coping) is 0.46 (sig.=0.01).
There is also a weak significant correlation of 0.23 (sig.=0.05) between scale 2 and scale 3 (non-constructive non-emotional coping).
In particular, the correlation between scale 1 and scale 2 indicates that there is a considerable group among the respondents that combines constructive as well as non-constructive emotional coping techniques. On the other hand, another group only uses these coping techniques to a limited extent. One reason can be that they experience few problems in their lives. The disadvantage Table 2. Means and standard deviations on scales for coping. strategies. Boys, girls and sample.
of this can be that they are not leaning on coping techniques, at least not at the present stage of their lives.
How does the combination of coping styles influence life satisfaction? We have used the median score of scale 1 (median=3.00) and the median score of scale 2 (median=2.42) to create four groups with different combinations of coping styles. Table 2 shows the mean and the standard deviations for life satisfaction for each of these four groups.
The two largest groups are the group with a high score (above median) on scale 1 as well as scale 2, and the group with a low score (below median) on both scales.
This coincides with the positive correlation between the two scales. If one looks at the gender composition of these two groups, there is a striking difference.
Among the 35 with a high score on both scales 27 (75 %) are girls. Among the 33
with a low score on both scales 27 (79 %) are boys.
We can see from table 2 that it is the group with a high score on scale 1 (constructive coping) and low score on scale 2 (non-constructive non-emotional coping) that has the highest mean score in life satisfaction. One should also note that the group with a low score on both scales has an almost equally high mean score in life satisfaction. Satisfaction with life sinks in the group with a high score on both scales (group 1). The group with a low score on scale 1 (constructive coping) and high score on scale 2 (non-constructive non-emotional coping) has the lowest mean score in life satisfaction for all of the four groups.
One-way ANOVA analysis shows that the difference between the four groups when it comes to life satisfaction is significant at the 5 % level. A post-hoc test
Table 3. Means and standard deviations on scale for overall life satisfaction. Combination groups of coping strategies.
(LSD) for a pairwise comparison of groups shows that the difference between group 2 and group 4, and the difference between group 3 and group 4 are significantly different.
Discussion
The empirical results indicate that relying on non-constructive emotional coping techniques seems to impair satisfaction with life. Combining these techniques with constructive coping techniques can alleviate this effect. Those who can be flexible in their use of coping techniques will have an advantage.
The gender differences in our material seem to indicate that girls have a more aware and active relation to the use of coping techniques than boys. This concerns both constructive and non-constructive emotional coping. Boys will, maybe, have to grapple with some of these challenges later in their lives.
One should bear in mind that these are schoolchildren in their early adolescence. In general, girls will be ahead of boys in their biological development, as well as their emotional development (see for instance Brody and Hall, 2010 on gender differences in emotional development). It is reasonable to believe that these differences will also have implications for a skillful use of coping techniques.