{"title":"Coping strategies mediated the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol among socioeconomically marginalized parents.","authors":"Jiying Ling, Sisi Chen, Maya Marina","doi":"10.1080/21642850.2024.2399211","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aimed to (1) examine coping strategies and their relationship with demographics, perceived stress, and hair cortisol; and (2) explore whether coping partially mediated the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Baseline data from 191 socioeconomically marginalized parents enrolled in two community-based clinical trials were used. The IBM SPSS Statistics Version 27 and Mplus Version 8 were used for data analyses.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Parents' engagement in various coping strategies differed by age, ethnicity, race, marital status, education level, and number of children living in the household. Parents' use of problem-focused (instrumental support, planning), emotion-focused (venting, self-blame), and avoidant coping (self-distraction, denial, behavioral disengagement) increased from having low to moderate stress. However, when perceived stress increased from moderate to high, their use of emotion-focused and avoidant coping increased significantly, but problem-focused coping did not. Emotion-focused coping lowered the influence of perceived stress on hair cortisol, while avoidant coping increased the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Although needing future investigation with longitudinal studies, the results suggest the need of promoting adaptive emotion-focused coping (emotional support, venting, and humor) to help socioeconomically marginalized parents manage their appraised overwhelming and uncontrollable stressors of food, house, and income insecurity.</p>","PeriodicalId":12891,"journal":{"name":"Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11382702/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21642850.2024.2399211","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, CLINICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Objective: This study aimed to (1) examine coping strategies and their relationship with demographics, perceived stress, and hair cortisol; and (2) explore whether coping partially mediated the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol.
Methods: Baseline data from 191 socioeconomically marginalized parents enrolled in two community-based clinical trials were used. The IBM SPSS Statistics Version 27 and Mplus Version 8 were used for data analyses.
Results: Parents' engagement in various coping strategies differed by age, ethnicity, race, marital status, education level, and number of children living in the household. Parents' use of problem-focused (instrumental support, planning), emotion-focused (venting, self-blame), and avoidant coping (self-distraction, denial, behavioral disengagement) increased from having low to moderate stress. However, when perceived stress increased from moderate to high, their use of emotion-focused and avoidant coping increased significantly, but problem-focused coping did not. Emotion-focused coping lowered the influence of perceived stress on hair cortisol, while avoidant coping increased the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol.
Conclusions: Although needing future investigation with longitudinal studies, the results suggest the need of promoting adaptive emotion-focused coping (emotional support, venting, and humor) to help socioeconomically marginalized parents manage their appraised overwhelming and uncontrollable stressors of food, house, and income insecurity.
期刊介绍:
Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine: an Open Access Journal (HPBM) publishes theoretical and empirical contributions on all aspects of research and practice into psychosocial, behavioral and biomedical aspects of health. HPBM publishes international, interdisciplinary research with diverse methodological approaches on: Assessment and diagnosis Narratives, experiences and discourses of health and illness Treatment processes and recovery Health cognitions and behaviors at population and individual levels Psychosocial an behavioral prevention interventions Psychosocial determinants and consequences of behavior Social and cultural contexts of health and illness, health disparities Health, illness and medicine Application of advanced information and communication technology.