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Age and Gender Effects on Coping in Children and Adolescents

NCJ Number
209614
Journal
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 34 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2005 Pages: 73-83
Author(s)
Petra Hampel; Franz Petermann
Date Published
April 2005
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This study investigated the effects of gender and age on coping with common stressors in the age groups of late childhood, early, and middle adolescence.
Abstract
Research has shown that children and adolescents are exposed to a variety of stressors. This study investigated the effects of gender and age, specifically late childhood, early, and middle adolescence on coping with two stress domains: interpersonal and academic. The study hypothesized that children and adolescents would employ more emotion-focused coping strategies in interpersonal stressors and more problem focused coping strategies in academic stressors. Coping styles were measured using the German Coping Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents. To investigate age and gender effects on coping strategies, multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA's) on cross-situational raw scores were carried out. Adolescent boys and girls, as well as girls from all age ranges scored lower on adaptive and higher on maladaptive coping strategies. In conclusion, the results support the multidimensional operationalization of coping. References