Relations Among Children's Coping Strategies and Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Coping Efficacy

Abstract

The current study tests a model that depicts the relationships among coping strategies (active, distraction, avoidance, and support seeking) and anxiety symptoms. SEM is used to test if the relationship between these variables is mediated by coping efficacy. A large sample of Canadian children (N = 506) aged 8 to 11 years (boys = 249, girls = 245, unknown gender = 12) participated in the study. Results showed that coping efficacy is a partial mediator of the relations between active coping strategies and anxiety symptoms, however support was not found for it to be an effective mediator for other coping strategies. This study contributes to the understanding of childhood anxiety by highlighting the importance of the relationship between anxiety and the methods children use to cope with stress and how perceptions of their coping abilities influence this relationship.

Relationship of Coping Responses and Anxiety Symptoms in Hispanic Youth

“…problem-focused coping) and anxiety in a community sample of African-American and Caucasian youth. These findings are inconsistent with most of the literature on childhood coping and anxiety [14,21]. In light of the mixed findings in the literature, it less surprising that the current study found no association between problem-focused coping and anxiety.…”

“…Another explanation to the findings could be that other variables may have influenced coping strategies. For example, coping efficacy, which refers to one's perception of whether a stressor is manageable or unmanageable, was a partial mediator between coping responses and anxiety symptoms in previous research [21]. Therefore, it is possible that a latent variable, such as coping efficacy, could have impacted the results.…”

“…They found that support seeking coping strategies had significant direct paths to anxiety. Additionally, another study examined coping and coping efficacy, which refers to people's evaluation of their ability to cope with stressors effectively [21]. They found that both avoidance and support seeking coping strategies were significantly associated with anxiety, whereas coping efficacy is negatively related to anxiety symptoms.…”

“…The final category was maladaptive coping responses, which included strategies that are inappropriate attempts to deal with the situation or that do not deal with the problem in a constructive manner including, externalizing behavior, worrying or catastrophizing, behavioral avoidance, cognitive avoidance, and lack of problem-solving. Although cognitive avoidance and behavioral avoidance were originally included in the emotion-focused coping category, based on research indicating that these are inappropriate attempts to deal with a situation [21], they were moved into the maladaptive coping category.…”

Linking Mother–Child Discrepancies to Behavioral Observations of Children’s Anxiety

“…In addition to our own current results, other researchers have pointed to the fact that anxiety evokes different types of coping strategies and different levels of capacities to mask anxious behaviors so that no single task can capture anxious behaviors reliably (Thorne et al 2013). However, the current study used a single anxiety-provoking task (videoed discussion) to capture all subtypes of anxiety disorders instead of focusing on one specific anxiety disorder, such as social or specific phobia (Beidel et al 2000;Kendall 1994;Kendall et al 1997;Turner and Romanczyk 2012).…”