Personal Values And Coping Case Study

PERSONAL VALUES AND COPING AMONG ADOLESCENTS

Atul Madaan*

Senthil Kumaran J**

ABSTRACT

Adolescent or school going age is vulnerable to changes in the surrounding and introjections of the authority time-to-time. The present study was conducted to find out relationship between values the student has introjected and the coping they have adopted to handle the academic and social problems faced by them. For this purpose normative survey research design was utilized with the purposive sample of 150 students belonging to 11th std. from a secondary school located in Jalandhar. Values of the students were assessed using Personal Value Scale (Verma, Pawar, 2013); and Coping was assessed using Brief COPE (Carver, 1997). These questionnaires were administered

Appraisal is the act of perceiving a stressor and analyzing one 's own ability to deal with the stressor. Appraisal can be made in three different conditions: when we have experienced a stressor, when we anticipate a stressor and when we experience a chance for mastery or gain. Once we appraise a stressful situation we must decide how we will respond or ‘cope’ with the stressor, either choosing to master it, reduce it or tolerate it. The coping style we engage in is ultimately determined by whether we believe we have the resources to resolve the stressor. There appear to be three main coping styles that people employ when attempting to resolve or remove a stressor: problem-focused, emotion-focused and avoidant coping.

Aim

The aim of the present study was to investigate the coping structure in relation to the personal values in adolescents; and to detect the possible differences based on their type of family.

Objectives

1.To study the relationship between personal values and coping among adolescents

2.To study differences in personal values on the basis of their type of family.

3.To study differences in coping on the basis of their type of family.

METHOD

Design

The present study employed a normative survey method which included administration of questionnaires to the identified sample. Formalities regarding approval and consents were duly accomplished and study assumes the preferences

The Brief COPE Scale is an abbreviated version of COPE inventory developed by Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub (1989) to assess a broad range of coping responses. The Brief COPE Scale was developed by Carver in the year 1997. It consists of 28 items and measures 14 areas of coping (Self-distraction, Active coping, Denial, Substance use, Use of instrumental support, Use of emotional support, Venting, Positive reframing, Behavioral disengagement, Planning, Humor, Acceptance, Religion, Self-blame) of two items each. Respondents were asked to answer to each item on a four-point Likert scale, indicating what they usually do and feel when they face stressful events (1 = I have not been doing this at all – 4 = I have been doing this a lot). The higher the score on each coping strategy, the greater the use of the particular coping strategy. The dispositional version of COPE is a widely used inventory with its cronbach’s alpha more than 0.60. Its test-retest reliability is 0.42 to 0.89 in different scales with satisfactory construct