Stress Coping Strategies Among Secondary School-Aged Students in Government Schools in Northern West Bank/Palestine

Abstract

Background or Objectives: All humans by nature cope with stressors by using productive and non-productive coping strategies. Adolescents and students in particular experience stress mainly due to academic examinations but the strategies adopted by students in the West Bank/Palestine are largely unknown and understudied. This study examines stress-coping strategies adopted by general secondary school-aged students in government schools in Northern West Bank. Methods: This is a quantitative designed study of 334 students selected from 39 schools utilizing a stratified random sampling method. A self-reporting questionnaire composed of Brief Coping Orientation of Problems Experienced (COPE) was used to identify stress management methods among the students. A scale consisting of 14 domains representing 28 coping methods was created with the following 4-likert-scale response choices: 1) "I haven't been doing this at all," 2) "I've been doing this a little bit," 3) "I've been doing this a medium amount," and 4) "I've been doing this a lot." Respondents reported their views scoring them from 1-4; the mean for each method was calculated and ranged from scores 2-6. Results: In all, religion (6.30±1.6,1) and planning (6.11±1.35) methods were the predominant domains of coping methods used by majority of the students. Problem-focused and emotion-focused coping methods were used more than the "less-useful" coping methods more among females than by their male counterparts. The "use of instrumental support," "denial," and "behavioral disengagement" were methods used more by students in the humanities than their counterparts in the scientific branches. Conclusion and Implications for Translation: Almost all of the students have different levels of stress with different effects. The useful (i.e., "problem-focused" and "emotion-focused") coping methods were mostly used by students, and the "less useful" coping once were used a "little bit." Religion and planning were the predominant coping methods used by students. It is recommended that schools should emphasize on the use of useful evidence-base coping methods to deal with their stress. Keywords: • Stress • Coping • Coping methods • Secondary schools • Students   © 2019 Al-Tell et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.