Coping styles and emotional and behavioural problems among Norwegian grade 9 students

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to explore the relations between coping styles and emotional and behavioural problems among adolescent students. The study was conducted as a survey among a representative sample of 2006 Norwegian 9th graders. The results show that emotional problems are associated with self-blaming as well as aggressive coping. Off-task orientation was associated with little use of planning and frequent use of aggressive coping. Finally, aggressive coping was the main predictor of externalizing problems, with infrequent use of planning and frequent use of behavioural disengagement as other significant predictors.