Contextual and Behavioral Correlates of Coping Strategies Among an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Urban Adolescents in the Midwestern United States

Introduction: Coping is recognized as an important life skill that exerts promotive and protective effects with respect to adolescents’ behavioral health, emotional health, and academic achievement (Muratori, Bertacchi, Giuli, Nocentini, Ruglioni, & Lochman, 2016; Gudino, Stiles, & Diaz, 2018). In the present cross-sectional analysis, adolescents’ relationships with their caregivers (support, conflict) and exposure to stressors (uncontrollable life events, violence) were examined as contextual correlates of both positive and negative coping strategies. These coping strategies were in turn examined as correlates of externalizing symptoms, internalizing symptoms, and academic investment.

Methods: Participants were 96 adolescents aged 8-15 years recruited from an urban Pre-K-8 school and Boys and Girls Club. Participants were predominantly male (72%) and African American (67%); 10% of participants identified as Asian; 15% identified as being of more than one race or ethnicity; and the remainder identified as Latino, White, or American Indian. A series of regression analyses were conducted, adjusting for site, age, gender, and race/ethnicity. Partial eta-squared (shown in parentheses) were examined as effect sizes for statistically significant effects.

Results: Adolescents who reported greater levels of support from caregivers reported greater engagement in all forms of positive coping [behavioral coping (.17), cognitive coping (.13), and coping through seeking support from family members (.32)]; they also reported less engagement in coping through anger (.11) and helplessness (.10). Uncontrollable stressful life events, violence exposure, and conflict with caregivers were not associated with positive coping among adolescents, but were associated with greater engagement in coping through avoidance (.07-.09) and anger (.06-.20). Conflict with caregivers was additionally associated with coping through helplessness (.11). High levels of behavioral (problem-focused) coping and low levels of coping through avoidance, anger, and helplessness were associated with fewer reported externalizing symptoms (.05-.39) and internalizing symptoms (.03-.15). High levels of behavioral (problem-focused) coping, cognitive (emotion-focused) coping, and coping through family support, and low levels of coping through anger and helplessness were associated with greater academic investment (.13-.23) and less behavioral disengagement in the classroom (.03-.24).

Conclusions: Additional research is needed to determine whether family and community context prospectively influences the development of coping strategies among children and adolescents, and whether coping strategies influence trajectories of behavioral health, emotional health, and academic investment into young adulthood.