К.п.н. Валиева Ф.И., Руснак Е.В.

Санкт-Петербургский Государственный политехнический университет

Coping Strategies Usage among Young Specialists: Age Dependent Specification.

The study was supported by The Ministry of education and science of Russian Federation, project 14.B37.21.0545.

It is estimated that most of the people every day suffer from stress and stressors. Stressful events throw our lives into turmoil in unpredictable ways. It may be connected with changes and challenges, with new environments that don’t justify one’s choice that is wildly spread among young specialists starting professional carrier. For some the stress of the event may become chronic, some may become depressed or develop posttraumatic stress disorder. Nevertheless, many people still find ways to meet the challenge and continue with purposeful lives coping problems and stresses.

As given in the dictionary, “stress” is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances .(1) The term “stress” is generally said to have come from the physical sciences in the seventeenth century, in particular the work of Robert Hooke. However, as Lazarus points out, the term can be found as early as fourteenth century when it was used to define hardship or adversity. So it appears that the discovery of stress in the twentieth century seems to be more of a rediscovery.

The next term frequently used in combination with stress in psychological literature is “coping”. In the work of Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman it is defined as the process of managing external and/or internal demands that tax or exceed the resources of a person (1984). In their framework, coping processes subsume both direct efforts to alter demands perceived as taxing one’s resources (problem-focused coping) and attempts to regulate emotions surrounding the stressful encounter (emotion-focused coping) .(2) It is a complex multidimensional process that is sensitive to both the environment and the personality of the individual. It is quite complicated to state whether coping is a conscious or unconscious choice of a particular strategy, still it is necessary to find more effective ways which will improve our ability to respond to stressful situations and to minimize negative emotions that go with it.

Hundreds of coping strategies have been identified, but there is no classification yet agreed upon. So due to the interest of this issue let’s consider the following categorizations.

1. Solution / Emotion Focused Coping Strategies.

Above mentioned Lazarus and Folkman who were the first to use the term “coping” in psychology offered the first binary classification which was bases on solution-focused strategies (including 11 copings) and emotion-focused strategies (including 62 coping activities). By turn R.H. Moose and J.A. Shaefer added one more point based on appraisal and importance of the situation for the subject. L.I. Perlin and C. Schooler offered a similar classification with three points (the strategy of changing the vision of the problem, the strategy of changing the problem itself and the strategy of managing with emotions). As far as we can see the last two classifications resemble Lazarus’s one. Actually many categorizations created later were made in similar binary tradition – work over solution and work over emotions and appraisal.

2. Cognitive / behavioral / emotional coping strategies.

Some researchers offer classifications which differ underneath prevalent processes: emotional, behavioral or cognitive which underlie. Nikolskaya and Granovskaya mark out 3 large groups of coping strategies on these very levels. There are classifications which deal only with one process. E. Koplik, for example, worked only with cognitive coping strategies. She offered a binary classification: strategy of searching the information and the strategy of getting isolated from it. On the contrary, P.P. Vitaliano sorts out 3 ways of emotional-oriented surmounting: self-accusation, avoidance and preferable interpretation.

3. Efficient and inefficient coping strategies.

Some researchers believe that it is better to group the strategies into styles of functional (efficient) and disfunctional (inefficient) aspects of coping. Functional styles are the efforts to manage with the problem with or without help of other people, whereas disfunctional styles are connected with the usage of unproductive (invalid) coping strategies. In literature unproductive strategies are accepted to be called avoidant coping. E. Frydenberg and R. Lewis offer a classification which consist of 18 strategies grouped in 3 categories (2): communication with others (addressing for help to the peer, relative or anyone else), non-productive coping (avoidant strategies which are the result of inability to sort the problems out) and productive coping (working over the solution saving the optimism, social connections and general tonus). Communication with others is somehow detached from the other categories, so it becomes obvious that the authors of the classification tried to interfere into such notion as “social activity”, which cannot be evaluated as productive or un-productive strategy.

There are more classifications like “Degree of control over the situation” - the way we plan our activity to solve the troubles and “Leveled structure of coping” - which involve actions, strategies and styles of coping, but we suppose that other points of next classifications were somehow revealed in previous or at least they are implied.

On the next step of the study the empirical part was conducted in the framework of our research. It was aimed at scrutinizing the correlation of some constructs of coping strategies and certain individual characteristics. During the research we have interrogated about 64 persons of different age-groups. These groups include school students at their last grade, students of the university on the threshold of graduation and teachers/lecturers. The purpose of the work was to understand which coping strategies are more typical for people of different ages or this choice is more of an individual psychological approach. We have tested the respondents on the base of two psychological questionnaires – Coping tests of Lazarus and Heim’s technique.

Pic.1. Confrontation and distancing coping strategies.

We have revealed that the confrontation coping which implies aggressiveness and readiness for risks and distancing descend by growing up, whereas the level of responsibility increases with age. The results of Lazarus’s test according to the mean value are represented on the above picture (Pic.1).

Pic.2. Results on social support and self-control.

As it is seen on the next picture need in social support is more inherent for the first group much younger than the last (teachers/lecturers). But it cannot be characterized by highly evolved self-control.

The technique also used for the interpretation of the results of the research is the correlation analysis which helped us to reveal the interconnection between different factors. It is worth mentioning that there is an obvious connection between age and length of service (working experience) with the correlation 0, 98.

Age

LoS

0,98

Pic.3. Correlation between age and length of service.

We have also found a strong positive correlation between self-control, confrontational and mal-adaptive emotional copings, as well as between distancing and decision-making. It gives us the understanding that if we change one coping strategy then the other will be changed as well. Positive appraisal correlates with mal-adaptive behavioral strategies (0, 96) and with age and length of service (0, 39). It confirms the fact that while growing the level of self-control increases as well and mal-adaptive behavioral strategies decrease. Of course the interconnection of the individual approach in choosing coping strategies is stronger than the influence of age factor but still it exists.

Summing up we’d like to emphasize that different types of our behavior depend on each other and if we change one type, another will alter as well. But we strongly believe that nevertheless coping is more about individual and unconscious approach, it may be changed and improved consciously if knowing the interconnection between different models of behavior.

Literature:

1. A Dictionary of Psychology (Oxford Dictionary of Psychology). Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press, USA; 3 edition - 2009, 896p.

2. Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Richard S. Lazarus, S, Folkman. Springer Publishing Company- 1984, 456p.