Coping Strategies and Stress Responses of Junior High School Students Preparing for High School Entrance Examinations: A Short-Term Longitudinal Study

The present study explored short-term longitudinal relations between several types of stress coping and psychological stress responses of junior high school students who were preparing for high school entrance examinations. Ninth graders (N=268) completed a questionnaire once a month for 3 months. Analysis using a multivariate latent curve model revealed the following: (a) the intercept of stress responses negatively affected the slopes of both problem-solving coping and dependent emotion-focused coping, (b) the intercept of dependent emotion-focused coping negatively affected the slope of stress responses, and (c) the intercepts of both stress responses and avoidant coping were positively related, however no longitudinal relation between stress responses and avoidant coping was found. The discussion deals with the influence of coping on stress and the importance for students who are preparing for high school entrance examinations of utilizing several types of coping.