92 COPING RESOURCES
When you have completed this chapter you should be able to:1 Describe and critically evaluate studies of coping and social support, including
strategies and styles of coping.
2 Discuss the implications of coping and social support for health.
3 Discuss the mechanisms by which coping and social support affect health.
4 Suggest ways to intervene to help individuals to cope with stressful situations.LEARNING OUTCOMESCOPING
Coping is a key element of Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) transactional theory of stress,
described in Chapter 2. In this theory, coping is viewed as part of the stress process,
defined as ‘constantly changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific
external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the
resources of the person’ (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984: 141). You may recall the two
types of appraisal. Primary appraisal involves the individual assessing the potential harm,
loss, threat or challenge imposed by the stressor, that is, what’s at stake. This leads to
secondary appraisal in which the individual evaluates the coping options and resources
available. In the case of potentially failing an exam, primary appraisals might range from
‘this does not matter too much, it’s just a setback’ to ‘this means I am hopeless and
my future is bleak’. Secondary appraisals will depend partially on the primary appraisal
but also on the resources the individual feels they have (including their confidence,
their intellectual resources, financial resources, etc.). In relation to the exam threat,
secondary appraisals could include investigating the possibility of re-sitting the exam
and planning how to do more work in future or eliciting the support of others to go
out and ‘drown your sorrows’. Thus appraisal provides the basis for coping and so leads
finally to the outcome that may involve emotional responses, behaviour and health.
Arranging to re-sit the exam and/or planning to do more work would both be
described as problem-focused strategies. These are strategies that involve trying to
obtain information and formulate actions that will change the situation, e.g. to reduce
or remove the impact of the stressor. However, ‘drowning your sorrows’ would be
an example of an emotion-focused strategy that simply aims to regulate the emotions
generated by the stressor, in this case, by avoiding thinking about it. An alternative
emotion-focused approach would be to think about the problem in a different light
(i.e. appraising it more positively, e.g. ‘this has taught me a lesson I won’t forget’).
Thus coping is a mediator between the stress appraisal and the final outcome (see Focus
5.2 for a further discussion of mediation).
To assess how people cope, Folkman and Lazarus (1988) developed a measure called
the Ways of Coping (WOC) Questionnaire. They used factor analysis of responses to
a range of coping items to produce eight overall measures. These are (1) confrontative
coping; (2) distancing; (3) self-controlling; (4) seeking social support; (5) accepting
responsibility; (6) escape avoidance; (7) planful problem solving; and (8) positive