Student homelessness is unfortunately a prevalent and growing issue nation-wide. Current estimates suggest that over one million youth are homeless in the U.S. at any given time and the prevalence of student homelessness continues to increase each year. Research indicates that homeless youth are at a greater risk for high stress and experiencing adverse life events. In turn, they are even more at risk for related psychological and academic impairments. Many homeless youth are impacted by mental health issues, including high levels of anxiety, stress, and depression. Additionally, youth affected by anxiety and stress often experience significant impairments in their academic and psychological functioning. The current study examined the relationship between anxiety and related psychological and academic functioning was positively or negatively impacted by a youth's coping style. In the current study, psychological functioning was defined as the presence of depressive symptoms while academic functioning includes both a sense of school connectedness and current grade point average. Results showed that coping skills do not impact the relationship between anxious homeless youth and their psychosocial and academic outcomes. However, findings suggest that a greater sense of school connectedness is associated with more positive academic and psychosocial outcomes. The study provides better insight for school personnel, psychologists, and mental health workers when providing services and interventions for homeless youth. Specifically, suggestions for further research and recommendations for fostering and implementing a greater sense of school connectedness within the school system are given.

Stress in sport is complex and can lead to a number of undesirable consequences such as burnout, performance difficulties, interpersonal problems, and injury. Lazarus’s (1991, 1999) Cognitive-Motivational-Relational model holds that stress is best understood as a transactional relationship between a person and their environment. Stress is a process which is influenced by appraisals and coping. Appraisals are influenced by personal factors as well as environmental demands and the availability of external resources. Coping involves constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage the perceived external and internal demands of a stressful situation (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The present study examined how appraisal processes mediated (or were possibly moderated by) the effects of social anxiety and perceptions of teammate social support on how high school female soccer players thought they would cope with a hypothetical interpersonal stressor. The study also examined simple relationships among variables. The participants were 181 female high school soccer players from Greater Vancouver. The athletes first completed two questionnaires designed to measure social anxiety (Interaction Anxiousness Scale; Leary, 1983a) and perceived social support from teammates (modified Social Provisions Scale; Weiss, 1974). After reading the scenario, the athletes indicated their appraisal of threat and challenge (Stress Appraisal Measure; Peacock & Wong, 1990) and how they thought they would cope (Coping Functions Questionnaire; Kowalski & Crocker, 2001). . The initial findings indicated that challenge appraisals were moderately correlated with both emotion-focused (r = .41) and problem-focused coping (r = .51), whereas threat had a weak association with avoidance coping (r = .19). Using mediation analysis, the results indicated that challenge fully mediated the relationship between social support and emotion-focused coping, and partially mediated the relationship between social support and problem-focused coping. Threat appraisals mediated the relationship between social anxiety and avoidance coping. Contrary to hypotheses, there was no evidence that social anxiety or threat were related to emotion-focused coping. There was also no support that person variables (social anxiety, social support) moderated the effects of appraisal on coping. The findings suggest that challenge appraisals and social support were key predictors of coping with interpersonal stress in this population. / Education, Faculty of / Kinesiology, School of / Graduate

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T23:03:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo8947_1.pdf: 952494 bytes, checksum: 0ee2141e9d84dd7c079a06eac3590e8b (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo investigar as emoções e as estratégias de coping frente à morte por parte de crianças em situação de rua e de nível socioeconômico médio (NSEM), na faixaetária de 7 a 12 anos, levando-se em conta a influência da idade, do sexo e da escolaridade. O conceito de morte biológica é visto como complexo, multidimensional, abrangendo noções tais como universalidade, não funcionalidade e irreversibilidade. Além dos aspectos naturalísticos, contemplaram-se os não naturalísticos, que se referem ao entendimento da morte, a partir de uma existência sobrenatural, de seres, forças ou elementos intangíveis. Concebem-se as emoções como intrinsecamente articuladas à cognição, constituindo-se como um conjunto de ações ou movimentos, que podem ser manifestados publicamente através de expressões corporais, como também a partir de instrumentos de pesquisa. As estratégias de coping referem-se aos esforços cognitivos e comportamentais das pessoas para lidar com as situações estressantes. Utilizaram-se como instrumentos: 1) Roteiro de Entrevistas semiestruturadas, visando a colher os dados sócio-demográficos da amostra; 2) Narração de uma História sobre um menino que experiencia a perda do animal de estimação; 3) Relato de Experiência Pessoal: após efetuarem-se questões relativas ao personagem, foi indagado se a criança já tinha vivenciado alguma situação parecida com a do garoto da História; 4) Instrumento de Sondagem do Conceito de Morte, elaborado por Torres para investigar os três elementos do conceito de morte em crianças. Os resultados indicaram que a emoção tristeza e as estratégias de coping de Negação estavam mais associadas às crianças de NSEM, de sexo feminino, que detinham uma melhor compreensão dos três componentes de morte biológica, enquanto as reações de choro eram mais peculiares às crianças em situação de rua, que apresentaram uma diversidade maior de emoções, reportando-se ao Enfrentamento para lidar com o estresse. Constatou-se que o menor entendimento dos componentes da morte pelas crianças em situação de rua correlacionava-se com a idade (as mais velhas compreendem mais), mas principalmente com a escolaridade, já que estas, na maioria das vezes, estavam mais atrasadas na escola. Constatou-se ainda que o fato de a criança freqüentar a igreja também influencia na sua facilidade de explicação e de entendimento da morte. Sendo assim, percebe-se a importância da Escola e da Igreja, na facilitação da apreensão do conceito de morte pelas crianças. Finalmente, os resultados apontam para uma articulação entre emoção e cognição, quando sugerem que a tristeza, bem como estratégias de coping centradas na emoção estão relacionadas com uma maior sofisticação cognitiva, ou a um maior domínio do conceito de morte, enquanto o choro e as estratégias mais focadas no problema distanciam-se desta compreensão

Romantic relationships are important for social development and can impact an individual’s functioning both positively and negatively, especially when the relationship breaks up. Emotional and cognitive coping strategies including emotion approach coping, avoidance, and rumination and variable response to expressive writing intervention were examined in relation to post-dissolution distress. Undergraduate participants randomized into two groups completed measures of cognitive and emotional coping variables and global distress, with the experimental group completing a three-session expressive writing protocol. Writing samples were rated for processing mode, or the degree of vague general statements. Avoidance and rumination demonstrated significant cross-sectional associations with Time 1 distress controlling for demographics and characteristics of the former relationship. Gender moderated the relationship between rumination and distress. Using a matched sub-sample, the groups did not differ on emotional coping variables or distress. Results demonstrate the importance of examining emotional coping strategies in conjunction with relationship dissolution.

Childhood chronic illness is replete with stressors that affect children's functioning across physical, social, emotional, and psychological domains. In this project, efforts were directed toward the identification and assessment of spirituality as a potential addition to the approach-avoidance paradigm of coping response. Twenty-two children diagnosed with either cancer or sickle cell disease were interviewed, along with their mothers, regarding psychosocial adjustment and typical approaches to coping with stressors. Children completed depression, anxiety, and quality of life questionnaires. Child participants were also asked to rate how often they utilized specific spiritual and general coping strategies in the month prior to the assessment. Mothers completed measures of depression and spiritual well-being, as well as parent proxy reports on their children's quality of life and use of spiritual coping. A factor analysis of the spiritual coping measure designed for use in the study (the Spiritual Coping Module) indicated strong support for the theoretically driven factors of religious and existential coping. Children's use of coping did not significantly account for heightened quality of life, nor for the presence of depressive and anxious symptomatology. However, maternal spiritual well-being accounted for 52.5% of the variance in self-reported maternal depression. Results are discussed in the context of improving children's adjustment to chronic illness through increased understanding of the child's and family's pattern of coping responses. / Master of Science

The purpose of this study was to examine stress that MFT graduate students experience in their personal lives. The researcher developed a 31-item quantitative and qualitative questionnaire to identify factors that relate to stress experienced by MFT graduate students and coping resources and strategies that MFT graduate students use to handle their stress. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of the 500 student members surveyed responded to the mailed questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, as well as quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. Quantitative results revealed that 94% MFT graduate students in this sample were moderately to highly stressed. The results also revealed that “Considering Dropping Out” is the strongest indicator of high levels of stress. Other statistically significant relationships found were age and student status (full-time or part-time). Qualitative results revealed students' coping skills and suggestions for MFT program directors to improve their assistance to students dealing with stress. / Master of Science

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