The role of family and school environment in developing coping skills among adolescents

Coping skills are those methods which are meant to cope with stress. The ultimate goal of these skills is a balanced life, with time for work, relationship, relaxation etc. The purpose of the present study was to explore the impact of family and school environment on coping skills viz. coping with emotions and stress in a sample of 500 adolescents from Patiala district of Punjab. The results of correlation analysis revealed a positive and significant relationship of these coping skills with cohesion, expressiveness, acceptance and caring, independence, active recreational orientation, organization and control dimensions of family environment among adolescents. However, a negative and significant relationship of these coping skills with conflict dimension of family environment among adolescents was observed. Also, coping skills among adolescents was found to be positively and significantly related to cognitive encouragement, permissiveness, acceptance and control dimensions of school environment. However, coping skills among adolescents were found to be negatively and significantly related to rejection dimension of school environment. A stepwise multiple regression analysis was run to examine the extent to which the various dimensions of family and school environment contributed to the variability in coping skills among adolescents. The results indicated that independence, expressiveness and acceptance and caring dimensions of family environment and rejection and control dimensions of school environment were the significant predictors of coping with emotions among adolescents. However, coping with stress was found to be significantly predicted by conflict, independence and control components of family environment and rejection component of school environment. Together these family and school environment components explain 12.1 % of the variance in coping with emotions and 20.5 % of the variance in coping with stress. These implications of the results of the study are discussed.