Using a transactional model of stress and coping, a measure of children's coping is offered and applied in a semi-structured interview in which specific coping styles are assessed. Data from 176 school-age children yielded findings on age and gender differences along with other preliminary suggestions of the validity of the instrument.

Data on 158 children, six and nine years old, are analyzed for the relationship between stress and behavior. Undesirable life events and intense "hassles" were particularly correlated with behavioral symptoms. Statistically, temperament appears to moderate this influence but, lacking appreciable variance of symptoms in the models including these interaction effects, the more parsimonious main-effects concept may be more useful.

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Analyzed data from 154 school-age children and their mothers to examine the relations between stress, perceived competence and contingency, and behavior symptoms. Analyses focused on the relative merits of unidimensional vs multidimensional measures of control in predicting symptoms. The stress of undesirable life events and behavior symptoms were related in the expected direction. Multiple regression models with R2 ranging from .11 to .14 (all ps less than .0002) included significant main effects for stress, competence, and control. Analyses supported the relative superiority of the multidimensional measure of control. Models containing main effects and interaction terms were of equivalent magnitudes in accounting for variance in symptom scores. Findings support the idea of perceived control as a moderator of the stress-illness relation and are consistent with earlier suggestions that simple main effects models may be the most useful in examining these relations.

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