New Questionnaire Will Determine How Teens Cope with Stress

10:17, March 10, 2023

Russia has developed the first adapted Russian-language version of the questionnaire for 13-17 year old teenagers

Experts from the Ural Federal University and Moscow State University have developed a questionnaire for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17. It will help practicing psychologists determine how young people deal with stress and what strategies they use to cope. This is the first Russian-language questionnaire developed exclusively for adolescents. The description and results of the study are published in the journal Heliyon. The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project №17-78-30028).

"Such questionnaires for adolescents have not been in use in Russia until now. Most studies on coping behavior have been conducted on adults, and the available methods did not meet psychometric requirements or contained a large number of questions, which is not suitable for the online format. We managed to adapt the questionnaire for adolescents and develop a short version," says Yulia Marakshina from the UrFU Centre of Population Studies.

The questionnaire has a total of 29 questions with the aim of identifying behavioral strategies. For example, 'I imagine other things to get distracted', 'I let my feelings out (e.g. shouting, swearing)', 'I seek advice from other people (e.g. parents, friends) about what to do next', 'I turn problems into a joke'. The result of the survey is a scale of coping strategies designed to understand how teenagers respond to stress: avoidance, search for socio-emotional support, religious practices, etc. The questionnaire is available on request from the authors of the study.

"Stressful situations for children can be very different. For example, peer rejection, problems at school, illness in the family. The psychological health of teenagers was also affected by the pandemic: stress could arise not only from the fear of getting sick, but also from the sudden shift to distance learning, which generally disrupted the usual routine. And our survey will help practicing psychologists to determine a teenager's behavior and help them cope with a difficult situation," adds Yulia Marakshina.

Reference

Coping is a conscious or unconscious strategy used to reduce unpleasant emotions. The most well-known and widely used measure of coping behavior is the Coping Strategies Diagnostic Scale - COPE. This questionnaire measures personal and situational coping strategies for stress and was developed by Charles Carver in 1989. Carver's questionnaire has 60 items and measures 15 coping strategies: "acceptance" - submission to the reality of the situation; "active coping" - active or direct action to deal with a stressful situation; "behavioral withdrawal" - refusal to actively deal with stress; "denial" - refusal to believe in what has happened or attempt to deny the reality of it and others. It can be used in health care: in the study of coping strategies in situations of drug addiction, aging, breast cancer, spinal cord injury, etc.

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office. 
info.international@urfu.ru, +7 (343) 375-45-19