A social work study on relationship between coping approaches and general self-efficacy scale

Article history: Received May 2, 2013 Received in revised format 25 June 2013 Accepted 7 July 2013 Available online July 9 2013 This paper presents a study on relationship between coping approaches and general self-efficacy scale among 67 teenagers aged 13-15 who attended guided schools in city of Najaf-Abad, Esfahan, Iran using a cluster random selection. Students were requested to fill in two questionnaires of Coping Strategies Scale-Revised (CSSR) and General SelfEfficacy Scale (GSES). The collected data were analyzed using Pearson correlation and stepwise linear regression techniques. The results indicate that effort has a positive correlation re-evaluation, planful problem-solving, Emotion-focused coping (P<0.01) and Active coping (P<0.05). In addition innovation maintains a positive relationship with restraint, emotion-focused coping and re-evaluation (P<0.01) and it has a negative relationship with avoidance coping (P<0.05). In our study, people with higher level of efficacy use planful problem-solving. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


Introduction
Social cognitive theory adopts a perspective in which many are producers of experiences and shapers of incidents.Among the techniques of human agency, none is more essential or pervading than the belief of personal efficacy (Dolan et al., 2008).This core belief is the basis of human agency.Unless people believe that they are able to produce desired influences and forestall undesired ones by their actions, they have little incentive to behave.The growing interdependence of human performing is placing a premium on the exercise of collective agency through shared opinions in the power to produce impacts by collective action.Bandura (2000) investigated the nature of perceived collective efficacy and its centrality in how people live their lives.In their study, perceived collective efficacy fosters groups' motivational commitment to their missions.Bandura, A. (2001) in other study states that the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one's life must be part of the human nature.Human agency can be characterized by a number of core features, which operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness, which include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one's capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and follow of one's life pursuits.
According to Endler et al. (1998), present conceptions relating psychological variables to health play essential role of coping processes as mediating variables between stress and illness, yet few reliable and valid instruments are available for the assessment of coping with physical health problems.Endler et al. (2000) examined the 'goodness of fit' hypothesis and to predict coping strategies, problem versus emotion focused, based on two kinds of situational control including objective and perceived.An experimental design evaluated the relationship between control over a stressful situation and the subsequent coping strategies implemented to confront that situation as well as psychological distress and coping efficacy.They reported that high control participants solved more anagrams and reported less anxiety than low control participants.Endler et al. (2001) investigated differences in illness-specific coping strategies, self-efficacy, and perceived control over illnesses in adults (18-72 years) reporting acute and chronic health problems.Analyses demonstrated that individuals with acute illnesses scored higher on general self-efficacy than individuals with chronic illnesses but they did not find any differences between illness groups in perceived control, although severity of illness ratings were detected to be negatively associated with perceived control.Graham et al. (2001) investigated relationsships among and between religion, spirituality, and the capability to cope with stress based on a sample of 115 graduate students in counseling.They reported that religion and spirituality positively were correlated with coping with stress.Counseling people who expressed spirituality through religious beliefs had bigger spiritual health and immunity to stressful situations than counseling volunteers who recognized themselves as spiritual but not religious.Counseling students with a religious/spiritual affiliation demonstrated more discomfort counseling clients hostile to religion compared with counseling volunteers with a spiritual-only affiliation.The results showed implications for preparing counseling students to work with clients with religious/spiritual issues.Karademas and Kalantzi-Azizi (2004) presented a comprehensive study on relationship between the stress process, self-efficacy expectations, and psychological health.They reported that psychological symptoms were forecasted by prior health, appraisal variables, and certain coping strategies.Selfefficacy expectations played a significant role in shaping threat, challenge, and stakes.These appraisal categories in turn exert impacted upon psychological health, even after controlling for prior psychological health and coping strategies.Self-efficacy served as the key variable in the appraisal process, as well as a mediator between inner cognitive structures and stress outcomes.During the past few years, there have been growing interests in introducing new methods for drug addiction recovery called cognitive-behavioural therapy in the treatment of addiction (James, 2008;Inglis, 2009;Kouimtsidis et al., 2007).

The proposed study
This paper presents a study on relationship between coping approaches and general self-efficacy scale among 67 teenagers aged 13-15 who attend guided schools in city of Najaf-Abad, Esfahan, Iran who were selected based on cluster random selection.Students were requested to fill in two questionnaires of Coping Strategies Scale-Revised (CSSR) (Lazarus, 1998;Schwarzer, 1992;Schwarzer, & Jerusalem, 1995) and General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) (Derogatis & Spencer, 1993).

The results
We first present details of our findings on components of CSSR and GSES based on Pearson correlation test.Table 1 demonstrates the summary of CSST and GSES components.As we can observe from the results of Table 1, there is a positive and meaningful relationship between social support and re-evaluation (r=0.67,P<0.01), between planful problem-solving and reevaluation (r=0.84,P<0.01) and between emotion-focused and avoidance coping.In addition, there is a mild and positive relationship between planful problem-solving and active coping (r=0.47,P<0.01), a positive relationship between innovation and planful problem-solving (r=0.46,P<0.01) and a positive relationship between effort and planful problem-solving (r=0.43,P<0.01).However, there seems to be no meaningful relationship between innovation and emotion-focused coping and restraint coping and emotion-focused as well re-evaluation.
We have also performed a step-wise regression analysis to find out the effect of each self-efficacy scale components on predicting coping approaches and Table 2 demonstrates the summary of our findings, As we can observe from the results of Table 2, the first variable, effort, has the highest positive impact on predicting coping approaches followed by innovation and perseverance.In addition, Table 3 demonstrates the results of ANOVA test to measure the difference between two groups with high and low levels of self-efficacy in coping approach.

Table 2
The summary of the effects of each self-efficacy scale components on predicting coping approaches

Table 3
The summary of one-way ANOVA test between two groups with high and low levels of self-efficacy