Individual, intergenerational, and contextual factors associated with coping strategies, coping variability, and perceived coping efficacy among young adults.

Abstract

Purpose: Stress-related coping is an important mechanism of mental health functioning. However, the distribution of coping processes across various factors (e.g., individual like sex, contextual like perceived social status) remain under-explored. This study identified individual, intergenerational, and contextual factors associated with coping strategies, variability in their use (as a proxy for using strategies flexibly across contexts), and perceived coping efficacy to handle stressors among young adults.

Methods: Participants from the Nicotine Dependence in Teens study (NDIT; N = 827) completed the validated Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations scale in 2011-12 (age ~ 24). Data on many factors, including race/ethnicity, intergenerational education patterns, and perceived social status, were collected from 1999-2000 (at NDIT inception; age 12-13) to 2011-12. Linear and multinominal regressions modeled the associations between individual, intergenerational, and contextual factors and coping strategies, variability, and efficacy, separately.

Results: Women versus men reported more frequent use of emotion-, distraction-, and social diversion-oriented strategies and higher variability levels (e.g., B_emotion=0.40, 95%CI = 0.28, 0.51), but less frequent use of task-oriented strategies and lower coping efficacy (e.g., B_efficacy=-0.46, 95%CI=-0.59, -0.32). Higher incomes, more educated mothers, and higher perceived social status in the community were associated with more frequent use of task-oriented strategies and coping efficacy, and less frequent use of emotion-oriented strategies. Other factors, including race/ethnicity, marital status, and school socio-economic status, were not robustly related to coping processes.

Conclusion: Findings document the distribution of coping processes across individual, intergenerational, and contextual factors among young adults, which may more broadly increase understanding of social disparities in mental health.