The relationship between coping strategies, decision coping patterns, and self-efficacy in adolescence

We postulated that coping strategies for dealing with stressful problems, coping patterns for dealing with difficult decisions, and self-efficacy beliefs are closely related processes. The study involved 566 Italian (298 girls, 268 boys) who were administered a scale to measure self-reported coping strategies in response to general and specific concerns and a questionnaire to measure self-reported decision-coping patterns. Correlations between coping strategies and decision-coping patterns were generally small to moderate indicating two conceptually and empirically separate but related processes. As predicted, the productive coping style was positively correlated with the vigilant decision-coping pattern. The coping strategy of reference to others was associated with vigilance among girls but not boys. Higher were correlated with vigilance and productive coping while lower self-efficacy beliefs were associated with procrastination, buck-passing and hyper-vigilance, and nonproductive coping strategies. This was found especially for girls. The chapter discusses the implications of the findings for research and practice in the field of stress-related coping strategies, decision-making patterns, self-efficacy beliefs and during adolescence.