Interrelationships between coping, school connectedness and wellbeing.

Interrelationships between coping, school connectedness and wellbeing. The growing interest in students' connectedness to school as akey influence on educational outcomes coincides with the emergence ofmiddle years of schooling (Years 5-9) as an educational priority acrossAustralia (for example, Cole, Mahar & Vindurampulle, 2006). Theyears spanning early adolescence (ages 10-15) are generally understoodto represent a critical stage of adolescent development (Barratt, 1998).The rapid physical, cognitive and social changes, and often new andincreased expectations at school (Eccles & Midgley, 1990) aredemands that have the potential for overloading the adjustment abilityof the young person (Feldman, Rubenstein & Rubin, 1988). Australianresearch has indicated that it is during these middle years of schoolingthat the highest incidence of disengagement, boredom, alienation,disruptive behaviour and disenchantment occur (Cumming & Cormack,1996; Hill & Rowe, 1998). Understanding the factors relating toschool connectedness in the middle years may help education leaders andschool practitioners to design more effective school environments. Twofactors associated with adaptation in early adolescence, coping andemotional wellbeing, are investigated here to identify the way in whichthey may be related to school connectedness. Background Coping In order to navigate through life successfully and to dealadequately with stress, individuals must learn to deal effectively withproblems. Problem-solving, an important coping skill, is essential aseffective problem-solving has been shown to moderate the effects ofstress (Printz, Shermis & Webb, 1999). While an individual'sability to deal with problems is influenced largely by individualcharacteristics such as life experience and personality, much can bedone to maximise coping abilities. Coping is typically referred to as the cognitive and affectiveresponses used by an individual to deal with problems encountered ineveryday life. More formally, coping is defined as 'the ongoingcognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific external and/orinternal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resourcesof the person' (Lazarus, 1993, p. 237). Individuals generally referto a certain repertoire of coping strategies when faced with stressfulevents. The choice of these strategies can be influenced by thesituational context of the stressor. Adolescents are likely to face a range of acute and chronicstressors as well as daily hassles in their lives, such as thoserelating to family, school and peers. While it is not possible toeradicate these stressors, their severity can be reduced. Where astressful situation is amenable to change, adolescents appear morelikely to use problem-solving strategies. In contrast, emotion-relatedstrategies, such as worry or self-blame, are more likely to be used insituations appraised as unchangeable (Folkman & Lazarus,1980).compas, Malcarne and Fondacaro (1988) asserted that adolescentsassess academic stressors as more controllable. Adolescents are morelikely to employ problem-focused strategies for those stressors, whereasinterpersonal stressors are viewed as less controllable andemotion-focused strategies tend to be employed as a response. It is clear that there are many ways to cope with stressors andthat specific coping strategies are neither inherently good nor badbecause different situations call for different responses. But it ispossible to differentiate coping in terms of effectiveness and todelineate coping into productive or non-productive strategies(Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a). The non-productive coping label hasoriginated from research that linked the use of strategies such aswithdrawal and avoidance to mental health problems (Ebata & Moos,1991; Sandler et al., 1997). Both local and international studies haveshown that the use of non-productive strategies such as self-blame,worry, keeping to self and wishful thinking have been linked with anumber of adverse outcomes in young people including depression(Cunningham & Walker, 1999; Murberg & Bru, 2005; Seiffge-Krenke& Klessmger, 2000). In comparison, productive coping strategies suchas solving the problem, working hard and relaxing have been associatedwith better health outcomes (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1999). Gender differences in coping have been consistently reported in theliterature with girls more likely to make use of non-productive copingstrategies, namely worry, wishful thinking and self-blame, while boysmake a greater effort to ignore problems and keep things to themselves(Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993b; Wilson, Pritchard & Revalee, 2005).What exactly constitutes effective coping is difficult to determine.However, research in the field of coping has identified particularcharacteristics that increase the likelihood of individuals' use ofeffective coping strategies. These characteristics include temperament,optimism, perceived personal control, positive familial factors,positive relationships with teachers, flexibility and the availabilityof social support (Frydenberg & Lewis, 2002; Luthar & Zigler,1991; Zimmer-Gembeck & Locke, 2007). Wellbeing To deal adaptively with the physical, intellectual and socialchanges required in early adolescence, a positive state of emotionalwellbeing is deemed necessary. Coping with social and situational causesof stress impacts specifically on an individual's subjectivewellbeing and self-efficacy, and more broadly affects relationships,aspirations and academic performance (Greenglass, 2002). In the past, the discussion of wellbeing has often been framedwithin a deficit model (Fraillon, 2004). There is a growing trend toreframe notions of wellbeing to incorporate more positive states ofbeing. Within this paradigm, the focus tends to be on general indicatorsof wellbeing such as health, resilience, self-concept, self-efficacy andachievement. Positive indicators of emotional wellbeing may includebeing able to express a point of view, having friends to talk to who canbe trusted, being valued by others, and feeling safe from harm. Consistent with the coping literature, age and gender differenceshave also been reported in wellbeing research. In a sample of Britishadolescents, Bergmann and Scott (2001) identified a marked genderdifference in wellbeing: girls reported lower self-esteem, highernegative self-efficacy and unhappiness, and more frequent experiences ofworry compared with boys. Additionally, these gender differences havebeen reflected both in the use of avoidant coping strategies such aswishful thinking or immersing oneself in other preoccupations, and inphysical and psychological health symptoms, such as anger, depressionand negative mood (Wilson et al., 2005). A systematic and extensive review of the literature on child andadolescent wellbeing was conducted by Pollard and Lee (2003) from whichthey concluded that there was a lack of consistency of definitions ofwellbeing in the literature and in the range of measures used. Pollardand Lee identified the following dimensions as sufficient to representthe wellbeing construct: physical, economic, psychological, cognitiveand social. Notwithstanding the multidimensionality of this perspective,for the purposes of this study, wellbeing is defined by the presence ofpositive affect as opposed to the absence of distress. School connectedness As with the concept of wellbeing, school connectedness has beenstudied under various names with a variety of definitions (Blum &Libbey, 2004). Examples of terms used include 'schoolbelonging' (Osterman, 2000; Willms, 2003), 'studentengagement' (Taylor & Nelms, 2006), 'school bonding'(Catalano et al., 2004), and 'teacher support' (Klem &Connell, 2004; Reddy, Rhodes & Mulhall, 2003). Libbey (2004)reviewed studies that are designed to measure students'relationships to their schools. She found the definitions of theconstruct appeared to vary based on the indicators used, which includedstudents' attitude and motivation toward school and learning, thedegree to which students felt they were liked by others at school, andstudents' commitment, involvement and belief in school rules. Forthe purpose of this study, school connectedness was defined asstudents' perceptions of being accepted by the school andidentifying themselves as being part of the school. Previous studies have shown strong relationships between schoolconnectedness and students' academic and psychological outcomes(see Bond et al., 2007; McGraw et al., 2008; McNeely & Falci, 2004;Nutbeam et al., 1993; Resnick et al., 1997; Shochet et al., 2006).School connectedness has been found to be related to low levels ofhealth-compromising behaviour, such as substance abuse (Carter et al.,2007). One Australian study examined the associations between adolescentstudents' social relationships, mental health, substance use,school engagement, and school achievement. A total of 2678 Year 8students participated in the study, which found that having both goodschool connectedness and peer relationships in Year 8 were associatedwith the most positive outcomes two to four years later. Students whoonly had good peer relationships but poor school connectedness were at agreater risk of anxiety or depressive symptoms and substance abuse (Bondet al., 2007). In a one-year longitudinal Australian study of around2000 early adolescent students, poor school connectedness was found tobe a predictor of future mental health problems (Shochet et al., 2006).The findings from these studies highlight the importance of schoolconnectedness for students' psychological wellbeing and academicachievement while they are at school and beyond. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the USA (90118 subjects) found an individual student's sense of schoolbelonging was inversely related to depression, social rejection andschool problems. When the data were aggregated at school level,belonging was positively related to greater reports of social rejectionand school problems, and to higher-grade point averages. The researcherssuggested that the results might imply that schools where most studentsfelt that they belong perform better academically. At the same time,those students who did not find themselves belonging to the school felta greater sense of rejection and therefore reported more school problems(Anderman, 2002). An understanding of the relationships between school connectednessand students' coping behaviour may help to devise better schoolinterventions to improve students' psychological wellbeing. Student engagement is one of the terms that has been usedinterchangeably with school connectedness. The Longitudinal Surveys ofAustralian Youth Research (Fullarton, 2002) defined engagement asstudents' participation in extracurricular activities. Thisdefinition is similar to Jenkins's (1997) reference to schoolbonding. Regardless of differences in terminology, some clear findingshave been established. As Resnick and colleagues (1997) demonstrated intheir study of 12 118 adolescents from 80 high schools in the USA,school and parent connectedness are key factors in resiliency. Interrelationships between coping,wellbeing and schoolconnectedness The authors have not found studies that examine theinterrelationships between coping, wellbeing and school connectedness.Studies generally indicate positive bivariate relationships betweenproductive coping strategies and a sense of wellbeing (for example,Frydenberg & Lewis, 2009), wellbeing and school connectedness (forexample, Carter et al., 2007), and positive coping and schoolconnectedness, in the form of positive relationships with teachers (forexample, Zimmer-Gembeck & Locke, 2007). An examination of theserelationships leads to speculation that they are interrelated. Within the field of wellbeing research, there have been a number ofstudies (see Braun-Lewensohn et al., 2009; Heubeck & Neill, 1999)that investigated facets of wellbeing using the Adolescent Coping Scale(Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a). There is also support for the use ofcoping as a correlate of wellbeing (Frydenberg & Lewis, 2009).Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that students who report morefrequent productive coping behaviour appear to have a better sense ofemotional wellbeing (Frydenberg & Lewis, 2009). In a study of copingand self-efficacy, Jenkin (1997) found that the best predictors fordistinguishing between high and low self-efficacy were three copingstrategies. These were focusing on the positive, solving the problem andworking hard to achieve. In Australia, Patton and colleagues (1997) found that a low levelof emotional wellbeing in adolescence was a risk factor for majordepression, substance abuse and self-harm behaviour. Another study ofwellbeing compared young people aged 12-18 years characterised bybehavioural, psychological and physical problems with a group of healthyadolescents (Ebata & Moos, 1991). The study measured use of bothactive and passive coping styles, and used perceived happiness andself-worth as measures of wellbeing. Results demonstrated a link betweengreater use of active coping (positive appraisal, guidance or support orboth, problem-solving) and higher levels of wellbeing. Positive affect can be helpful in participating in the activitiesthat are important in the classroom (Schutz et al., 2006). The'broader mindset' with a positive mood state encouragesexploration, extension of self and the sharing of information. Resnickand colleagues (1997) interviewed young people for emotional distress,suicidal thoughts and behaviour, violence, use of substances(cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana) and two types of sexual behaviour (ageof sexual debut and pregnancy history). They found that 18.4 per cent of9th to 12th graders experienced significant distress. Thus, it can beexpected that--while most young people go through their school yearswith a healthy positive affect--there are many for whom dealing withtheir emotional wellbeing is imperative. Other studies have investigated the relationships betweenwellbeing, coping and academic achievement (Noto, 1995; Parsons,Frydenberg & Poole, 1996; Skinner & Wellborn, 1997). Researchfindings generally indicated positive relationships between academicachievement and coping. In particular, Parsons, Frydenberg and Poole(1996) identified that academically capable students are less likely todeclare that they do not have the strategies to cope; such students usemore active coping, particularly social support. While it may be deducedfrom these findings that academically high-achieving students experiencegreater wellbeing, it appears that it is the perception of academicability as opposed to actual achievement that is more greatly related toadolescent life satisfaction and subsequent well being (Suldo, Riley& Shaffer, 2006). It has been recognised that students who feel connected to theirschool report fewer depressive symptoms (Shochet et al., 2006). Thisleads to an assumption about the likelihood of a positive relationshipbetween school connectedness and wellbeing. Additionally, there areindications that adolescents are less likely to report a sense ofwellbeing when they report use of negative coping strategies (Frydenberg& Lewis, 2002; 2009). As stated earlier, Australian research hasindicated that during the first years of secondary school (middle years)adolescents face a higher incidence of disengagement, alienation,disruptive behaviour, disenchantment and boredom (Cumming & Cormack,1996; Strategic Initiatives Directorate, 2005) demonstrating theimportance of focusing on this adolescent population as these factorsare likely to have a substantial impact on wellbeing. Research aim In summary, the literature that is available to date on wellbeing,coping and school connectedness appears to indicate that therelationship between each of these constructs could provide insightsthat may facilitate healthy adaptation. The aim of this study is toexamine the contribution of productive and non-productive copingbehaviour to both emotional wellbeing and school connectedness. If thereis some clarity about how these constructs interrelate, and knowing thatcoping skills can be developed, this may provide information aboutteaching coping skills in ways that specifically target emotionalwellbeing and school connectedness. It is expected that the major impacton emotional wellbeing will be through greater use of productive copingand lesser use of non-productive coping. Since school connectedness islikely to be influenced by a range of factors (for example, schoolclimate, educational progress, and peer and teacher relationships),increasing productive coping and thus emotional wellbeing is not initself likely to be sufficient but could be beneficial. The findingsfrom the study could identify potentially useful approaches to maximiseadolescent wellbeing in the school context and hence studentconnectedness through the development of coping skills (Hayes &Morgan, 2005). Figure 1 shows the hypothesised model. Coping behaviour ishypothesised to be directly associated with both emotional wellbeing andschool connectedness; productive coping will have positive associationsand non-productive coping will have negative associations. This copingbehaviour is also anticipated to have an indirect influence on schoolconnectedness mediated by emotional wellbeing. Productive andnon-productive coping types of behaviour are assumed to be uncorrelated. Method Participants Data was collected from 536 students (241 boys and 295 girls) innine Melbourne metropolitan Catholic schools. Participants were agedbetween 12 and 14 years, and were all enrolled in Year 8 Englishclasses. Of this sample, 93.6 per cent of participants were born inAustralia. Most (75 per cent) indicated that they spoke English at home,22 per cent spoke English and another language, while 3 per cent spoke alanguage other than English at home. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Procedure and measures As part of a larger longitudinal study, self-report data on schoolconnectedness, emotional wellbeing and coping styles were collected inthe students' regular school setting. Parental consent was obtainedfor all students to participate. School connectedness School connectedness was measured by a set offive items that focused on students' perception of theirconnections with the school (Table 1). The items were measured on afive-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 =neither disagree nor agree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree). The itemswere adapted from the Pickett and Fraser's (2002) What is Happeningin This Class? questionnaire, the Beyondblue (2003) student survey, andthe Drug Education Evaluation and Monitoring (DEEM) Project survey(Insight SRC, 2005) (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = .86). Coping styles Coping style was assessed using the Adolescent CopingScale-Short Form (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a), in which participantswere asked to indicate what they generally do and feel when theyexperience a stressful event. The short form of the Adolescent CopingScale consists of 18 items constituting three styles of coping:productive (for example, 'Work at solving the problem to the bestof my ability'), reference to others (for example, 'Talk toother people about my concern to help me sort it out'), andnon-productive (for example, 'Worry about what will happen tome'). Each item is answered on a five-point Likert scale, rangingfrom 'I never do this' to 'I do this a lot'. Forthis study, the productive and non-productive coping styles were used(Table 1). Given the possibility of shared variance across the referenceto others' coping styles and the school connectedness scales,inclusion of this coping scale would not contribute to clearunderstanding of the interaction between coping and connectedness. Theproductive coping scale comprised six items (Cronbach's alphacoefficient = .71) and the non-productive coping scale comprised sevenitems (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = .76). Emotional wellbeing The emotional wellbeing index comprised sixitems reflecting an optimistic outlook, an interest in life, feelingrelaxed, loved and needed, happiness, and self-worth. Five of the itemswere adapted from the Mental Health Inventory (Vert & Ware, 1983)while one item was from Rosenberg's (1979) Self-Esteem Scale. Itemswere measured on a six-point Likert scale (1 = none of the time, 2 = alittle of the time, 3 = some of the time, 4 = a good bit of the time, 5= most of the time and 6 = all of the time). The items were summed togenerate a composite measure indicating positive affect or lifesatisfaction (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = .79). Table 1 includes items contributing to all four scales togetherwith labels to facilitate understanding of Figure 2. Results The scales were checked for multivariate normality, analysed forgender differences and entered into a path analysis. The items contributing to each of the school connectedness,emotional wellbeing, and coping scales were added to obtain a totalscore. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted toexamine gender differences on the four scales; productive coping,non-productive coping, emotional wellbeing, and school connectedness.There was a multivariate difference according to gender F(1,531) =5.90,p < .001, n2 = .04. From the univariate tests it was evidentthat this difference was attributable primarily to school connectedness.On the school connectedness measure, females (M = 20.60, SD = 2.92)scored higher than males (M = 19. 41, SD = 3.26), F(1,534) = 19.96,p< .001, partial n2 = .04. The boys and girls did not differsignificantly in their non-productive coping, F(1,534) = .09, p = .76;productive coping, F(1,534) = 1.57, p = .21; or emotional wellbeing,F(1,534) = 3. 34, p = .07. Since the effect size of the difference inthe one significant measure was very small, gender differences were notcontrolled for in subsequent analyses. Table 2 shows the means and standard deviations of the four scalesbased on their raw scores for both genders. Path analysis Before carrying out path analysis, the measurement model wastested. The loading of the items in the various constructs were examinedusing AMOS 7.0 (Arbuckle, 2006) confirmatory factor analysis withmaximum likelihood estimates. The analysis found the items loadedsatisfactorily onto the respective constructs, x2 (246, N = 536) =599.7, p<. 05, %2/df = 2.44; Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) = .91;Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGF) = .89; Root Mean Square Residual(RMR) = .06; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .05. Due to the known issue with excessive skewness in two of themeasures (school connectedness and non-productive coping), data werethen analysed using the AMOS analysis of covariance structure approachto path analysis and maximum likelihood estimates with bootstrapping.Zimmer-Gembeck and colleagues (2006) recommended the combination ofthese techniques for increasing the power to detect the direct andindirect effects of variables, and analysing multivariate non-normaldata. Figure 2 shows the results of testing the framework for the study.The indicators of each scale are identified by the item labels shown inTable 1. An assessment of normality produced a Mardia coefficient of 106. 8,which is greater than the critical value of 35.0. This indicateddeviations of the data from normality, confirming the appropriateness ofthe use of the bootstrapping technique. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Note: Fit statistics X2 (247, N = 536) = 613.7, p < .05, X / df= 2.49; Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) = . 91; Adjusted Goodness of FitIndex (AGF) = .89; Root Mean Square Residual (RMR) = .07; Root MeanSquare Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .05. As can be seen in Figure 2, the data fit the model in an acceptableway. The model as a whole explains 59 per cent of variance in emotionalwellbeing and 35 per cent of variance in school connectedness. Aspredicted, productive coping was found to have positive relationshipswith emotional wellbeing (.65) and school connectedness (.28).Non-productive coping, on the other hand, had weak negativerelationships with emotional wellbeing (-.41) and school connectedness(-. 19). Emotional wellbeing had a weak but positive relationship withschool connectedness (. 29). All of the regression weights mentionedwere statistically significant (p < .05). These estimates weresimilar to the bootstrapped estimates. In order to elucidate the contribution made by non-productivecoping to wellbeing and connectedness, the model was tested withnon-productive coping removed. The variance explained for connectednessremained similar to the full model at .34 while the variance explainedfor emotional wellbeing reduced to . 48. The path from productive copingto wellbeing increased slightly to .70, and from wellbeing toconnectedness from the full model path value of .29 to .41. Thisindicates the inhibiting influence of non-productive coping throughemotional wellbeing on connectedness. Discussion The results of this study supported the hypothesisedinterrelationships between coping styles, emotional wellbeing, andschool connectedness. Students who use more productive coping strategieshad a better sense of wellbeing and reported greater connectedness withtheir school. The negative associations of nonproductive coping withwellbeing and with connectedness tend to support the findings of Shochetet al. (2006) who showed that poor school connectedness predictsdepressive symptoms in adolescents and depressive symptoms have beenfound to be associated with the use of non-productive coping strategies.These results indicate that students who reported a higher usage ofnon-productive coping strategies had a lower sense of wellbeing andschool connectedness, although these relationships were less strong thanthose associated with productive coping. Wellbeing's positive relationship with productive coping andinverse relationship with non-productive coping are consistent withFrydenberg and Lewis' (2009) study of active and negative avoidantcoping styles. Teaching coping skills is one way to contribute to the effort toimprove student wellbeing and school connectedness. The strongerrelationships between productive coping and wellbeing imply that thereis substantial benefit in investing effort into developing andaugmenting the use of productive coping strategies. While reducing the use of non-productive coping strategies isdesirable, it appears to be secondary to the benefit derived forwellbeing from the use of productive strategies. Nevertheless, given thefrequently reported relationship between nonproductive coping anddepression (for example, Cunningham & Walker, 1999; Murberg &Bru, 2005) it is deemed advisable also to emphasise reduction innonproductive coping strategies. Both the increased use of productivecoping and the reduced use of non-productive coping are likely toinfluence school connectedness, as demonstrated by these data. One ofthe limitations of the path analysis is that the results do not implycausal relationships. It needs to be pointed out that it may also beimportant to increase school connectedness in diverse ways since strongstudent connectedness to school may encourage the use of productiverather than nonproductive coping strategies, albeit indirectly. What is clear is that there is a strong relationship betweenproductive coping and wellbeing. Similarly wellbeing is associated withminimisation of use of nonproductive coping strategies. The weakerassociation between coping and school connectedness is mediated throughwellbeing. Those young people who are more likely to use productivecoping over non-productive coping have a greater likelihood ofexperiencing wellbeing. To a lesser extent, those who use productivecoping and have a good sense of wellbeing are more likely to beconnected to school. 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Esther Chan is an Educational Psychologist who is currently anAustralian Research Council Postgraduate Award holder in the MelbourneGraduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Elizabeth Freeman is Coordinator of the Master of Education(Student wellbeing) and a Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne GraduateSchool of Education.Table 1 Items contributing to the emotional wellbeing and schoolconnectedness scalesLabel Emotional wellbeing itemsEW1 How much of the time have you felt that the future looks hopeful and promising?EW2 How much of the time has your life been full of things that were interesting to you?EW3 How much of the time did you feel relaxed and free of tension?EW4 How much of the time have you felt loved and wanted?EW5 How much of the time were you a happy person?EW6 How much of the time have you felt that you are a person of worth, as good as other young people of your age? School connectedness itemsSchCon1 Other students in this school are friendly towards meSchCon2 I feel comfortable with others in this schoolSchCon3 Other students in this school listen to my ideasSchCon4 I feel accepted by others in this schoolSchCon5 I think that I 'fit in' at this school Productive coping itemsCoping 2 Work at solving the problem to the best of my abilityCoping 3 Work hardCoping 6 Improve my relationship with othersCoping 15 Look on the bright side of things and think of all that is goodCoping 17 Make time for leisure activitiesCoping 18 Keep fit and healthy Non-productive coping itemsCoping 4 Worry about what will happen to meCoping 7 Wish for a miracleCoping 8 I have no way of dealing with the situationCoping 9 Find a way to let off steam for example, cry, scream, drink, take drugsCoping 11 Shut myself off from the problem so that I can avoid itCoping 12 See myself as being at faultCoping 13 Don't let others know how I am feelingTable 2 Means and standard deviations of productive andnon-productive coping, emotional wellbeing and schoolconnectednessVariable Mean Standard DeviationProductive copingMale 23.85 3.77Female 24.25 3.58Non-productive copingMale 18.35 5.30Female 18.50 5.71Emotional wellbeingMale 26.53 4.45Female 27.22 4.31School connectednessMale 19.41 3.26Female 20.60 2.92