Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the association between personal control beliefs and problem- and emotion-focused coping for Australian university students. This report also found the generalizability of the findings of O’Connor and Shimizu’s study involving a British sample to an Australian sample. A total of 90 university students from Australia (80% female, mean age of 31.11 years) took an online survey. The Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WCQ) was used to measure coping, whereas the Internal Control Index (ICI) was used to evaluate a sense of personal control in the participants. Three coping sub-scales of problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, and escape-avoidance were assessed in the study. It was observed that a high sense of personal control was linked with increased problem-focused solving and decreased emotion-focused coping. Nonetheless, personal control had a small negative correlation with emotion-focused coping, which was the only difference from O’Connor and Shimizu’s findings in the British population. The study outcomes confirmed the generalizability of O’Connor and Shimizu’s stress coping mechanisms of British populations to other English-speaking people due to certain similarities in their cultures and individualistic stances.
Introduction
Personal control beliefs and stress coping styles play a vital role in the psychological well-being of the population. The term personal control belief means a person’s view about the degree to which they can regulate or sway outcomes. The terms “locus of control” and “personal mastery belief” may also be used to mean the same thing. The two main forms of personal control beliefs are internal locus control and external locus control. Individuals with internal loci of control think that they can manipulate events and their consequences, whereas people with external loci of control hold outside forces responsible for all events in their lives (Gore, Griffin, & McNierney, 2016). Therefore, the locus of control plays a vital role in an individual’s personality. Perceived control refers to people’s confidence that they have power over their inner state, actions, places, people, or things that surround them (Buddelmeyer & Powdthavee, 2016).
Coping style, on the other hand, refers to mechanisms used in a deliberate effort to minimize the effects of nerve-wracking events. Coping skills can be theorized as a mixture of coping styles and different coping strategies. A coping pattern is a blend of attributional styles such as the professed cause of stress, the locus of control, personality attributes, and positive or negative outlook on discovering a resolution. Examples of personality traits include acceptance of risk, sense of self-sufficiency, and self-absorption or gregariousness. Coping strategies are a reflection of various stress reactions that can be applied effectively. These strategies can be taught overtly or through demonstrations. They include measures such as adaptive, cognitive, self-harm, conversion, behavioral, attack, and defense.
Adaptive measures indicate strategies used to endure stress (for example, selflessness and symbolization) while cognitive approaches change the course of thinking to minimize or eliminate the stress factor. Cognitive tactics include intellectualization, justification, withholding, despotism, and compartmentalization (Montero-Marin, Prado-Abril, Demarzo, Gascon, & García-Campayo, 2014). Self-harm denotes stratagems that are set to injure the self in response to stress. On the other hand, conversion is the transformation of one’s thoughts, actions, or feelings into another form (an example is a somatization). Behavioral strategies change the affected person’s actions to diminish stress through measures such as disengaging, redirecting, or attempting to repair the damage. Defense coping strategies handle stress unconsciously through retreating and reaction formation while an attack stratagem shifts consciousness to people who are unrelated to the stress factors. Attack coping strategies include disarticulation and projection (Montero-Marin et al., 2014).
These coping strategies can be grouped into three classes: passive coping, active coping, and avoidance. Avoidance is a form of denial response where an individual chooses to believe that there is no stressor hence eliminating the need to modify behaviors, outlooks, or emotional reactions. In avoidance strategies, individuals tend to address their problems by forgetting them or diverting their attention from the problem (Cheng, Lau, & Chan, 2014). Gaining and upholding appropriate coping skills require practice. Nonetheless, using these abilities becomes easier as time progresses.
Individualism and collectivism are useful concepts regarding coping with stress. Individualism is the tendency to prioritize personal goals, whereas collectivism gives precedence to group goals. O’Connor and Shimizu (2002) suggest that people who subscribe to individualism tend to handle stress better than those who subscribe to communism. Some investigators contend that this connection is a representation of Western preferences because a sense of autonomy is a reflection of individualistic Western values, which differ significantly from Eastern communist ideals (Vu, Finkenauer, Huizinga, Novin, & Krabbendam, 2017). Differences in attributional prototypes across different cultures are responsible for individualism-collectivism characteristics. Individualism is reported to play a significant role in the internal acknowledgments of the person’s overall temperament. On the other hand, people in collectivist cultures are bound by the numerous requirements of the family and community. Consequently, they have less freedom and autonomy to promote their objectives, which influences the outcomes in their lives.
It is also known that there are personal differences in managing stressful encounters. Problem-focused coping involves behaviors that address the stressor, whereas emotion-focused coping entails mannerisms that tackle the emotion attributed to the stressor. A person is more likely to apply a problem-focused approach when he or she evaluates a problem and considers it changeable. Emotion-focused strategies, conversely, are more effective if a person decides that nothing can be done to remedy a situation. Additionally, the use of problem-focused coping tactics has a positive correlation with measures of mental well-being, whereas depending on emotion-focused strategies leads to unfavorable mental health outcomes.
O’Connor and Shimizu (2002) examined the connection between the sense of personal control, pressure, survival, and mental distress in a sample consisting of people of Japanese and British origins. Japanese subjects had a considerably lower perception of personal control than the British participants. Furthermore, the Japanese reported higher professed stress levels and negative mood than the British respondents. There were cultural disparities in the coping styles employed by the two groups. The Japanese respondents used more emotion-focused approaches such as avoidance and positive reassessment in nerve-wracking situations compared to the British sample. There were no differences in the problem-focused coping between the two groups (O’Connor & Shimizu, 2002). Perception of personal control was only linked with stress, mental anguish, and coping style in the British sample, which supported the idea of a Western bias in coping styles.
The association between perceived control and coping style for English-speaking samples has been described by several authors. Bjorck, Cuthbertson, Thurman, and Lee (2001) assessed appraisal, coping, and anguish in American Korean, American Filipino, and Caucasian Protestants. The Asian American groups considered stressors more challenging than the Caucasian group. However, the two Asian American groups acknowledged the use of more strategies involving the acceptance of responsibility, religious survival, isolation, and avoidance than the Caucasian Americans did. On the other hand, the Filipino Americans recounted more problem-solving approaches compared to the Caucasian Americans.
Kuo and Gingrich (2005) evaluated between- and within-group patterns of interdependent and independent self-interpretations in a sample comprising Asian Canadian, Caucasian Canadian, and Asian International undergraduate students. Different factors such as sexual category, socioeconomic standing, the ability to read English, professed interpersonal stress, and coping machinery were evaluated. The observed patterns highlighted the effect of culture on self-construals.
Tweed, White, and Lehman (2004) looked at culture, stress, and coping control strategies (internally- and externally-targeted) of European Canadians, East Asian Canadians, and Japanese samples. Different types of internally targeted control strategies were prevalent among East Asian participants. However, a specific form of internally directed control strategy and self-enhancing explanatory control was dominant in people with Western English-speaking upbringings.
The purpose of this report was to determine the association between personal control beliefs and problem- and emotion-focused coping for Australian university students. This study also determined the generalizability of the findings from a study conducted by O’Connor and Shimizu (2002) on a British sample to an Australian sample. The study group in the experiment consisted of Australian students, who were mainly English-speaking people of Western descent. Previous studies have indicated that coping strategies have a Western bias and that English-speaking populations were less inclined towards emotion-focused coping approaches due to individualist cultures. Therefore, it was hypothesized that the personal control beliefs and problem- and emotion-focused coping for Australian college students would mimic the coping styles of a British sample as reported by O’Connor and Shimizu (2002). The findings of this report will provide additional insight into cultural disparities in personal control, stress, and coping styles. The findings will also inform the integration of culture-based self-interpretations into counseling practice when dealing with Australian populations.
Method
Participants
The study consisted of 90 participants out of which 80% was female. The mean age was 31.11 years (SD= 10.18). Of these subjects, 15 (17%) were full-time employees, 53 (59%) were in part-time employment, whereas 22 (24%) were unemployed. The highest level of education completed was a university degree in 23 (25.6%) of the subjects, secondary school for 32 (36%) of the participants, and TAFE for the remaining 35 participants (39%). About 66% (59) were full-time students, whereas 34% (31) were part-time students with a study load of 1 or 2 units.
Measures
The questionnaires that were used for this report were the Ways of Coping Questionnaire [WCQ] (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004) and the Internal Control Index [ICI] (Duttweiler, 1984). Coping was measured using the WCQ, which contained 50 items that portrayed various cognitive and behavioral stratagems that people employ in the management of internal and external demands during stressful experiences. The WCQ contained eight sub-scales, which were minimized into three sub-scales: problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, and escape-avoidance. Components of problem-focused coping included confrontational coping, strategic problem solving, and looking for social support. The constituents of emotion-focused coping encompassed isolation, escape-avoidance, self-controlling, admitting responsibility, and positive reevaluation. Each item was scored on a 4-point Likert scale that varied from ‘not used’ to ‘used a great deal’ (O’Connor & Shimizu, 2002). Participants were asked to specify the extent to which they had applied each of the points in the previous month when they had trouble.
The ICI was used to assess a sense of personal control. The items included in the tool were based on factors that appeared to have a considerable influence on the internal locus of control. They included intellectual processing, self-sufficiency, resistance to shape attempts, delayed fulfillment, and self-confidence (Duttweiler, 1984). These items were scored on a 5-point Likert scale that ranged from ‘rarely’ (less than 10% of the time) to ‘usually’ (more than 90% of the time). Half of the items were reverse-scored (externally oriented items) after which all items were summed to find a total score for the scale.
Procedure
Data collection was done through an anonymous online survey. Participants completed two questionnaires, the first of which was 28-items long. The second questionnaire was 68 items long. It took about 15 to 20 minutes to complete the survey. Data analysis was conducted to determine the correlations between study variables.
Results
Participants who reported greater personal control also reported the improved use of problem‐focused coping methods when dealing with life difficulties in the previous month. The size of the effect of personal control and problem-focused coping was medium. Participants who registered increased personal control also reported decreased emotion‐focused coping methods when dealing with life difficulties in the previously ended month. However, the size of the effect of personal control and emotion-focused coping was small. Subjects who reported greater emotion-focused coping also reported greater use of problem‐focused coping methods when dealing with life difficulties in the last month. The size of the effect of emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping was medium. A summary of the statistical findings is provided in Table 1.
Table 1. Pearson r correlations for the study variables.
Note: ** p <.01
Discussion
This study sought to determine the association between personal control beliefs and problem- and emotion-focused coping for Australian university students as well as the generalizability of findings from a British sample to this population. It was observed that a greater sense of personal control was associated with increased problem-focused solving and decreased emotion-focused coping, which was in line with the hypothesis that personal control beliefs and stress-coping styles of Australian campus students would mimic the coping styles of a British sample as reported by O’Connor and Shimizu (2002). A medium-sized effect of the positive correlation between personal control and problem-focused coping among British subjects as well as between emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping was reported. However, personal control had a small negative correlation with emotion-focused coping, which was contrary to the findings of this study. The findings of this study also corroborated the observations made by Tweed et al. (2004), Kuo and Gingrich (2005), and Bjorck et al. (2001) concerning stress coping mechanisms in English-speaking groups. These findings imply that there is a strong link between cultural perspectives, personal control, and stress-coping styles. Viewpoints about the capacity to regulate or control stressful occurrences could affect the extent to which a person tries to overcome or alter the stressful situations instead of trying to endure the unpleasant circumstances.
The degree of alleged sense of control determines how effectively an individual can cope effectively with stress, which in turn influences the psychological well-being of the person. Studies indicate that tactics that entail involved coping, for instance, active confrontations, and comforting ideas were linked with a heightened sense of control and mental well-being. On the other hand, strategies that entail disconnection adjustments such as a passive response pattern, comforting reaction, and evasion were connected to poor control whose consequence was negative mental well-being. Nerve-wracking life events predispose the affected people to health problems such as cardiovascular disease, malignancy, and major depressive symptoms (Dijkstra & Homan, 2016). In addition, stressed employees are likely to shift from one workplace to another (employee turnover), which diminishes productivity. In school settings, stressed students are likely to register poor academic performance.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated that stress-induced outcomes lead to economic losses to the tune of “EUR 9.2 billion in the EU, £1.1–1.2 billion in the U.K, and USD 6.6 billion in the US” (Dijkstra & Homan, 2016, p. 2). Additionally, work-related pressure, depression, or apprehension make up 39% of work-related sickness, which leads to the loss of approximately 11.3 million workdays. Therefore, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the stress process to avoid or minimize the deleterious bodily, mental, and economic outcomes of stress. There have been significant applications of coping research findings in areas such as behavioral medicine, nursing, public health, and medicine. The findings of this study can be applied in these fields to explain why certain people progress better than others do when dealing with stressful events in their lives. Information about coping strategies and their variations across different populations would be useful in directing cognitive-behavioral intervention.
The main limitation of this study was the failure to capture the precise characteristics of stressful episodes. Folkman and Moskowitz (2004) recounted that coping styles varied based on the perceived changeability of the stressful event. People were more likely to employ tactics that retained their focus on the state of affairs if they perceived a stress factor as changeable. Such approaches include strategic problem solving, assuming accountability, and dealing with the beneficial aspects of the encounter. On the contrary, distancing and escape-avoidance approaches were likely to be used when a situation was appraised as unalterable. Therefore, there was a likelihood of bias linked to the kind of stressful encounter. The second shortcoming was that the evaluation of coping did not consider circumstantial judgments of the capacity to control a situation or stress levels ensuing from the situations. Therefore, future studies should replicate this experiment while regulating for the kind of stressful encounters to illustrate the physiognomies of this effect. Additionally, stress and coping research need to look into the function of stable and situational factors in shaping coping reactions.
The present study aimed at determining the association between personal control beliefs and problem- or emotion-focused coping for Australian university students. A secondary objective was to ascertain whether the stress-coping strategies of British populations also applied to Australian populations. An elevated level of personal control was associated with increased problem-focused solving and decreased emotion-focused coping. These findings highlighted cultural similarities in the sense of personal control, stress, and coping styles between British and Australian respondents. More problem-focused strategies were employed in the face of stressful encounters. Overall, the study confirmed the generalizability of O’Connor and Shimizu’s stress coping mechanisms of British populations to other English-speaking groups due to certain similarities between their cultures and individualistic stances.
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