Chapter 1: Thriving, Surviving, Or Going Under: Which Coping Strategies Relate to Which Outcomes?

Early research in the field of coping in the adolescent area has generally focused on the coping process without taking outcomes into account. Later research has more frequently addressed outcomes, but the interest has generally been on dysfunction. As psychology is moving to emphasize health and well-being rather than focusing solely on prevention of maladaptation, there is an interest in resilience, in addition to dysfunction (see Chapter 7 by Israelashvili and Chapter 12 by Rollin et al., this volume). This chapter examines the relationship between measures of well-being and dysfunction in a sample of 1, 264 12–16 year olds, and the relationship between both of these and adolescents’ coping strategies. In doing so consideration was given not only to how often strategies were used but also how effective they were perceived to be by the individuals using them. Significant relationships were noted between the usage and effectiveness of a range of strategies and well-being and dysfunction. For nonproductive strategies both well-being and dysfunction related more closely to usage than to perceived effectiveness. In contrast when productive strategies were considered, boys’ perception of a strategy’s usefulness was more closely related to well-being than was the frequency with which the strategy was used. The implications of these findings are discussed.