Temperamental determinants of coping flexibility in adolescents

Purpose
Temperament is reflected in the way of the individual’s responding to life events. The purpose of the study was to assess, firstly, the role of temperamental traits in adolescents’ coping flexibility, and secondly, relationships of their coping flexibility with demographic and psychosocial characteristics.

Methods
Participants in the study were 368 adolescents (131 boys and 236 girls) aged 15 to 20. The average age in the study group was 17.26 (SD = 1.90) years. The following methods were used: the Coping Flexibility Questionnaire for Adolescents (KERS-14A) by Małgorzata A. Basińska et al., the Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS) by Jan Strelau and Bogdan Zawadzki, and a demographic-psychosocial questionnaire developed for the purposes of this study by the present authors.

Results
Temperament was found to be a statistically significant predictor of coping flexibility and its dimensions, explaining 12% of the variance in coping flexibility, and respectively: 6% of the changeability strategy, 20% of the variance in coping competencies, and 7% in reflexivity. The research findings show that the strength of excitation and the strength of inhibition processes were predictors of coping flexibility. Adolescents characterized by greater strength of both these processes turned out to flexibly deal with stress more often.

Conclusions
Temperamental characteristics determine adolescents’ flexibility in coping with stress. Coping flexibility depends also on their self-assessed socioeconomic status and health.