The purpose of this study was to elicit information about the process of coping employed by battered women during a hypothetical abusive incident. The research question addressed in this study was: How do appraisal of an event, the use of coping resources, and coping strategies vary across three phases of a single stressful incident?Four variables were examined as group tendencies to react and changes over three phases of a hypothetical abusive incident. These variables were: 1) reported emotions, 2) extent to which the participants felt they could alter the situations (perceived control), 3) use of social support and 4) ways of coping at each stage. In addition, individual differences in coping as a function of emotions experienced, feelings of control and use of social support were also examined. The participants in this study were 54 females who had been admitted to a shelter for battered women. An experimental, repeated measures design was employed and data was analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance and linear, stepwise regression analysis. All hypotheses were tested at alpha = .05.The results of this study showed that emotions, perceptions of control and coping strategies significantly changed across the three phases of the abusive incident. There were significant main effects found for emotions, perceptions of control and types of social support used, regardless of the phase of the incident. In addition individual differences in coping as a function of cognitive appraisal variables were also found. This study shows that a stressful encounter i s a dynamic, unfolding process and riot a static unitary event. As the abusive incident proceeded from the anticipation stage to the outcome stage, there were concomitant changes in emotions, appraisals of control over the situation and coping strategies used. This study also showed that people cope in complex ways and that problem-focused coping was combined with emotion-focused coping at each stage of the encounter.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/175215 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Brecker, Barbara A. |
| Contributors | Barke, Charles R. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | vi, 188 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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