This study was designed to examine: how siblings of chronically ill children cope with decreased parental availability, disruption to daily routines, and worries about the ill sibling; whether siblings cope differently with each of these three situations; what type of coping strategies siblings perceive as effective; the relation between psychological adjustment and the use of problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies; and the incremental variance in siblings' psychological functioning accounted for by siblings' coping strategies after controlling for age and gender. The study also explored how coping differs as a function of secondary appraisal and whether there are gender differences in coping. The Cognitive Appraisal Model of stress and coping guided the study. 110 participants (56 girls and 54 boys), 8--12 years old, completed the Kidcope, the Children's Depression Inventory, and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, and parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist. Results indicate that siblings' coping strategies explain a significant proportion of the variance in externalizing (14%) and internalizing (7%) behaviour problems after siblings' age and gender are controlled for, though coping is not related to child-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety. The most frequently used coping strategies are cognitive restructuring and wishful thinking. Other commonly utilized strategies are social support, distraction, problem solving, emotional regulation, and social withdrawal. Of these, social support is perceived as the most helpful in dealing with decreased parental availability and disruptions to routines, and cognitive restructuring as the most helpful in dealing with worries. Siblings employ significantly more emotion---than problem-focused strategies in dealing with all situations, though the use of problem---or emotion-focused coping is not related to secondary appraisal. Problem-focused coping in dealing with disruptions and worries is associated with higher parental reports of externalizing problems, whereas the use of emotion-focused coping in dealing with these two situations is associated with fewer such reports. There are no gender differences with regard to the relative use of problem---or emotion-focused coping. Research and clinical implications of these findings, as well as the insights and limitations of this study, are considered in the discussion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/8877 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Bendavid-Streiner, Zohar. |
| Contributors | Goodman, John T., |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 173 p. |
Page generated in 0.0018 seconds