COPING STRATEGIES AND PREVENTION OF PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR AT SCHOOL: EXPLORATORY RESEARCH CARRIED OUT IN A SCHOOL OF VELLETRI

CIURLIA ANTONELLA

Considering the close relationship between adolescence and the rise of antisocial behaviour, in the last years forensic psychology has turned its interest to those events and situations which could represent factors of risk in the age of development and it has tried – in a perspective of prevention and improvement – to shift the focus of its analysis from the events in themselves to those ways that enable the individual to cope with those same events. The subject of the present contribution is the process of coping, i.e. the survey and measurement of the strategies used by adolescents in order to deal with some events that in the most recent literature have been identified as particularly stressful.

It has been largely documented that adolescence puts teenagers in front of the necessity of overcoming a series of developmental tasks. Although these tasks can be differently defined according to the social and cultural environment of the young person, they require however a considerable effort and investment of energies. The chief developmental task of adolescence consists in the formation of an adult and separate identity. This means that the adolescent has to treasure the experiences of the previous phases, to search his/her own way of becoming part of society and to confront himself/herself with his/her own way of being and of appearing.

However, merely considering the conflicting aspects of adolescence means assuming a narrow perspective. As a matter of fact each young person can live in a different way the difficulties he/she has to face and use more or less efficiently the resources at his/her disposal. It shouldn’t be forgotten that adolescence also represents an important time of recollection in the life of an individual, of enlargement of experience and of possible reconsideration of the problems left unsolved in childhood. If one tried to integrate these two different ways of considering the phenomenon of adolescence, one could look at such a delicate stage in the individual growth as a rich reservoir full of potentialities waiting to come off. Nevertheless, it must be always taken into account that some events with which the adolescent confronts himself/herself may cause the failure of the attempts that he/she has made to try to maintain a balance between some characteristics of his/her personality and the demands coming from the external world. It is therefore of the utmost importance for him/her to have the possibility of resorting to a repertoire of behaviour that enable him/her to deal with the different situations presented by his/her surroundings. According to the theorists of "coping", the impossibility of structuring abilities to deal with everyday events, as well as with particularly problem situations, or the lack of a net of social supports able to back up the individual and to help him/her to reduce the impact of negative experiences could lead to problem behaviour.

The emergence of antisocial behaviour doesn’t seem, however, to be so much related to the character of transition specific to adolescence, as to the difficulties posed by the psycho-social changes and role shifts that occur at this stage of development. If, therefore, in a perspective of intervention aiming at the improvement of the resources owned by adolescents, one tried to increase, whether lacking or inadequate, the ways in which young people deal with the problems of everyday life, one could offer them a means to improve their personal competence in the planning of their own lives.

For many years in the study of emotions the concept of "coping" has been neglected both because the overlap between the concepts of stress and of emotions had not been immediately grasped and because "coping" has been considered for a long time as a process guided basically by emotions. Nowadays the process of "coping" is defined as the whole of the behavioural and cognitive attempts made by an individual in order to deal with a particular condition that has been perceived as stressful.

The aim of this research is to identify the styles of "coping" displayed by some pupils confronted with a series of problem situations. To get knowledge of the ways through which pupils manage to face events perceived as problematical could, in fact, give useful hints about the potential use of the resources that young people possess to overcome difficulties.

The path that leads the adolescent to grow up is studded with events that, depending upon the characteristics of his/her personality and the kind of social context in which he/she lives, could be perceived as going beyond his/her capacity. If one could single out specific abilities to deal with these events and if these abilities turned out to be efficacious in the overcoming of the difficulties and in the adaptation to the external environment, one could shape a new way of approaching situations of psycho-social risk in such a delicate age as adolescence.

The problem situations proposed concern school failure, the difficulties of interaction with peers and the difficulties of interaction with adults, both parents and teachers. The choice of these events is not accidental, but it has been suggested by those trends of research which have emphasized the importance of the relationships with peers and with the family for the psychological growth of the individual and which have demonstrated that school experience is one of the most demanding developmental tasks for the adolescent, to such an extent that a school failure could even become a factor of psycho-social risk.

The inquiry carried out had as main objectives:

The instrument of measure that has been used, Coping Strategy Indicator (CSI), is a questionnaire consisting of 33 items grouped in 3 different scales. Each scale measures one of the three fundamental coping strategies, i.e. Problem Solving, Seeking Social Support and Avoidance. Considering that the CSI is by definition three-dimensional and that the fundamental strategies are independent from each other, it is necessary to compute three different total scores of coping. Before they answered the questionnaire, students were asked to choose only one amongst the stress events proposed, that is to say the one that they really lived and perceived as particularly problematic, and to answer the questionnaire referring to the event chosen.

The questionnaire was administered to 132 subjects (25 females and 107 males), whose ages ranged from 14 to 21, attending the Istituto Tecnico Agrario of Velletri (Rome).

The statistical analysis (chi square, ANOVA, MANOVA) of the data gathered has allowed to point out which was in the entire sample the situation with the highest number of preferences.

Picture n.1 shows that school failure obtains a percentage of 57%, this means that this event has been perceived as more difficult in comparison with the other two under consideration. This isn’t a surprising result if one considers that the importance that school experience has in the growing path of the adolescent has been emphasized several times. School failure becomes a problem with which the young has to confront himself/herself becoming aware not only of the causes that have led to the failure, but also of the resources at his/her disposal which could improve and solve the situation.

24% of the preferences is given to the difficulties of interaction with adults. This result too is significant if one considers the changes involved by adolescence and the transformations taking place in the relationships between the adults and the adolescent. Difficulties with peers were chosen less frequently and this could find a justification in the fact that in adolescence the group of peers represents a source of support rather than of problems or else in the fact that, when compared with other situations lived as particularly stressful, the difficulties with peers appear less catastrophic and are therefore overshadowed by other developmental tasks.

It has been intentionally considered a possible influence of the variable "sex" upon the choice of the situation.

The chi-square calculated on the frequencies reported in table n.1 is significant. Always taking into account the fact that the number of female subjects was very small, it can be concluded that the choice of the situation is influenced by the sex of the subject. Whereas boys have prevailingly chosen the school failure, girls have mainly opted for the difficulties with peers and with adults. The fact that boys more than girls tend to choose school failure could lead to believe that boys consider school as a means to increase their self-esteem and to give proof of their capabilities, hence a failure can be lived as a problem that threatens their identity. Girls instead, who for cultural reasons are more inclined towards interpersonal relationships, endure much more painfully the difficulties with adults and peers.

On the contrary, the chi-square applied to the variable "school class" (table n.2) turns out to be devoid of significance. Therefore one can affirm that school level does not influence the choice of the stress situation.

It is nevertheless interesting to note in table n.2 that the cell (*) with the largest number of cases is the one corresponding to the crossing between the first class and situation n.1 (school failure). This could lead to the belief that in the critical moment of the passage from compulsory school to high school, the young person feels intensely the burden of school involvement and of success as a confirmation of his/her personal capabilities.

Absolutely, i.e. independently from the chosen situation, the most used strategy both by males and by females is Problem Solving, followed by the strategies of Seeking Social Support and of Avoidance. This suggests that the kind of approach privileged by adolescent is of cognitive, rational and autonomous type (Picture n.2).

As far as the single strategies used are concerned, it has been noticed that girls resort more to the strategy of Seeking Social Support and to that of Avoidance. It is probable that girls respond to stress events by seeking the support of the others, while boys tend to trust more in their personal resources rather than in the support of other people. That this kind of attitude has to be ascribed to the habits and styles to bring up and educate children according to their different sexual roles is, however, an hypothesis that has still to be proved. If compared to male adolescents of their same age, female adolescents make a larger use of strategies of emotional type (Seeking Social Support and Avoidance).

Furthermore it has been pointed out that in the group of those having chosen as event school failure the use of the Seeking Social Support strategy is significantly minor than the use of the other two strategies (Picture n.3).

One could conclude that this event, being so strictly connected to the striving for achievement and to the self-esteem of the subject, has to be faced and overcome by the young person with his/her own personal resources, that is to say without the resort to psychological help or to social support.

Besides, it has been pointed out that the nature of the stress event, i.e. of the chosen situation, doesn’t produce significant differences in the scores reported in the three scales. This means that the scores obtained for the single strategies haven’t shown considerable variations related to the situation chosen. This should lead to the conclusion that the nature of the stress events doesn’t play a central role in the choice of coping strategies and that hence it has to be recognized a supremacy to the "style" of coping.

Finally, the lack of a clear vision of the correlations between the different coping strategies induces to think that they are effectively independent from each other. The use of one of them has no influence on the resort to the others. Even the antithesis between Problem Solving and Avoidance that has been hypothesized in the literature doesn’t find a confirmation in the correlative analysis.

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