Using Time-Varying Effect Modeling to Examine Age-Varying Gender Differences in Coping Throughout Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

Findings highlight the utility of TVEM for advancing our knowledge on gender and coping across developmental time, as males and females used coping strategies at differing rates throughout adolescence and emerging adulthood. Implications for tailoring gender- and age-specific intervention efforts to improve coping and related health behaviors are discussed.

Perceived Family and Friend Support Moderate Pathways From Peer Victimization to Substance Use in Early-Adolescent Girls and Boys: A Moderated-Mediation Analysis

“…Girls are more likely to seek social support for purposes of emotional comfort (Flannery, Vannucci, & Ohannessian, 2018), which may be effective in protecting girls from increases in depression symptoms following social stressors. By contrast, boys are more likely to accept instrumental social support through tangible problem solving to cope with a stressor (Flannery et al, 2018), which may be especially amenable for helping with behavioral problems and poor academic achievement resulting from peer victimization. Overall, findings from the current study implicate an important protective role of perceived support from both friends and family during early adolescence.…”

“…Gender differences in social support seeking strategies may account why perceived support would protect relationally victimized girls from depressive symptoms and overtly victimized boys from low academic achievement. Girls are more likely to seek social support for purposes of emotional comfort (Flannery, Vannucci, & Ohannessian, 2018), which may be effective in protecting girls from increases in depression symptoms following social stressors. By contrast, boys are more likely to accept instrumental social support through tangible problem solving to cope with a stressor (Flannery et al, 2018), which may be especially amenable for helping with behavioral problems and poor academic achievement resulting from peer victimization.…”

The Role of Gender in Worry and Efforts to Cope during Stressful Waiting Periods

“…Emotion-focused coping, as compared to problem-focused coping, entails addressing the distress associated with a challenging life event or experience rather than attempting to alter or address the event itself (e.g., Folkman & Lazarus, 1980;Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004). Women's greater tendency to employ emotion-focused strategies to cope with stress has been demonstrated quite broadly, including in studies addressing daily stressors in the general population (Matud, 2004) and stress among college (Brougham et al, 2009;Eaton & Bradley, 2008;Guszkowska, Zagórska-Pachuka, Kuk, & Skwarek, 2016;Stanton, Kirk, Cameron, & Danoff-Burg, 2000) and high school students (Flannery, Vannucci, & Ohannessian, 2018). A meta-analysis of 50 studies addressing gender differences in coping concluded that even after controlling for women's general tendency to appraise stressors as more severe, women nonetheless engage more in emotion-focused coping strategies than do men (Tamres et al, 2002).…”

How Does Family Connectedness Contribute to Youths’ Health? The Mediating Role of Coping Strategies

“…Despite this apparent diversity, many studies have highlighted that girls generally use coping strategies to a higher degree than boys (Connor‐Smith, Compas, Wadsworth, Thomsen, & Saltzman, 2000). More precisely, girls report higher usage of social support (Jenzer et al, 2019; Tamres et al, 2002; Wilhsson, Svedberg, & Nygren, 2017), rumination (Matthews, Hall, Cousins, & Lee, 2016), and emotion‐focused strategies (Flannery et al, 2018). On the other hand, boys report using more problem‐solving (Low et al, 2012), distraction (mainly sport and online gaming) (Eschenbeck, Schmid, Schröder, Wasserfall, & Kohlmann, 2018; Wilhsson et al, 2017), and avoidance (Eschenbeck et al, 2018; Jenzer et al, 2019; Tamres et al, 2002; Undheim & Sund, 2017) than girls.…”