Master of Arts (Applied Psychology)

The objective of this study was to compare differences in the coping strategies, the abuse characteristics, and the psychological sequelae between female and male participants who were sexually abused in childhood. Ten women and twelve men participated in the study.

In this concurrent embedded design study, priority was given to results derived from the qualitative data that was collected by means of the grounded theory approach, while the quantitative data, measured by the COPE and SCL-90-R standardized instruments, was used to support results from the qualitative analyses.

The results of this study identified four main coping strategies, namely, avoidance, emotional release, disclosure and support seeking, and religion. Furthermore, the age of onset of child sexual abuse was found to be lower than most other surveys, at 7.05 years old, and the majority of participants chose not to disclose their initial sexual abuse experience, coping with the ensuing psychological sequelae on their own, until some 17 years later. Subsequently, disclosures were made principally to counsellors and pastors.

Implications for counsellors included a need to appreciate the psychopathological complexities and multi-faceted coping strategies engendered by childhood sexual abuse across the lifespan, to familiarize themselves with the available diagnostic instruments, and the most efficacious treatment strategies now available for addressing abuse-specific consequences, so that these can be incorporated into standard practices for the sexually abused client and their families.

There has been a growing number of foreign students studying in Singapore schools in the light of the government’s commitment to establish Singapore as a global education hub. However, there appears to be a current lack of local research carried out on the characteristics and experiences of these foreign students in Singapore.

The intention of this study, therefore, was to find out as to how these foreign students cope when they are faced with academic and inter-personal relationship problems as well as their preferred sources of help that they will seek when dealing with these challenges. It is hoped that the insights gained will facilitate the customisation of programmes and services to ensure the well-being of these foreign students so that their educational experience in Singapore will truly be a memorable one.

This study found that the adolescents’ coping behaviour may be more likely to be dispositional rather than situational with no significant effect due to gender differences. It was also revealed that adolescents of the three nationalities, namely Singaporeans, PRC Chinese and Malaysians, exhibited significant differences in their emotion-focused coping behaviour when dealing with academic and inter-personal difficulties.

The results of this study further indicated that, across the genders, age groups and nationalities, the adolescents’ preference to seek help from informal sources such as from friends, parents or family members is significantly higher than seeking help from professionals for both schoolwork and interpersonal relationship problems. Such low utilization of professional resources by adolescents was consistent with past research.

Implications of the study and recommendations for further research are also discussed with a view to better meet the needs of the international foreign students in Singapore in the near future.

The intent of this research was to study the relationship between adolescent coping and self-esteem of less academically able students, and to explore how their perceived internal resources (intelligence, discipline, etc) and their access to external resources (family members/ teachers/ peers) influence how they cope with difficulties in schoolwork. The coping behaviour studied here was categorised as Problem-Focused Coping (PFC) and Emotion-Focused Coping (EFC).

The main sample was from two classes of Secondary 2 Normal (Technical) or N(T) students in one neighbourhood secondary school. Students from two classes of Secondary 2 Normal (Academic) or N(A) and two classes of Secondary 2 Express were used as comparison samples. All in, the number of students from the Secondary 2 N(T), N(A) and Express courses who took part in the study was 67, 78 and 78 respectively, giving a total of 223 students. A survey questionnaire (Appendix A) incorporating 24 items from the Adolescent Coping Behaviour Scale (Khoo, 2002) and the 25-item Self-Esteem Checklist (Lui, 1987) was used. Additionally, 14 students from the main sample were selected to be interviewed by the researcher, to further gain insights into the difficulties and constraints that N(T) students face which might hamper them from better school achievement. The researcher was guided by an Interview Guideline (Appendix B) for the individual case interviews.

The hypotheses for this study were:
(1) N(T) students use more EFC and less PFC, compared to more academically able students, when faced with academic difficulties.

(2) There is significant positive correlation between PFC and Self-Esteem.

(3) There is significant negative correlation between EFC and Self-Esteem.

(4) N(T) students are more likely to use PFC when they perceive that they have adequate internal resources to overcome the problem, or they can and are willing to access external resources (family members/teachers/peers) for help.

(5) N(T) students are more likely to use EFC when they perceive that they do not have adequate internal resources to overcome the problem, and they are unable or unwilling to access external resources for help.

The findings in this study supported hypotheses 1, 2 and 3. This is similar to Khoo’s study (2002). There were significant differences among the three courses in the use of PFC, and in the use of EFC. In particular, N(T) students used more EFC and less PFC, compared to the other two courses, when coping with difficulties in schoolwork.

The additional information gained from the interviews provided support for hypothesis 4. N(T) students who perceived themselves to have less internal resources, and had less external resources or did not access the external resources available to them, employed less PFC.

Hypothesis 5 was not supported by the findings of this study.

This research study came about with the need to examine individual differences that influences to the risk of school failure in students with lower academic ability, with the hope that the findings could contribute to efforts to help these students cope with the demands of the knowledge-based economy. This study was a preliminary investigation on the use of coping strategies, and the differences in personality traits between students of high and low risk in academic failure. The study also explored the differences in the use of coping strategies and in the personality traits of Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) students in Singapore schools. Attempts were made to examine whether there were any relationships between coping strategies and demographic variables.

The sample of students (N = 147) was chosen from the Normal (Academic) Course and the Normal (Technical) Course in a typical neighbourhood school. The choice was made with the assumption that the students who qualified for those courses would have performed relatively poorly in the Primary School Leaving Examination, as students from both Normal courses constitute approximately the bottom 11% of each cohort that enters secondary school in Singapore. The outcome of effective coping is defined as the ability to perform academically in school, as measured by school achievement scores. Coping strategies were operationalised as self-reported coping attitudes and behaviours and assessed through a survey instrument named the Student Survey of Coping with Learning in School. Personality traits were measured by the 5th Edition of the 16PF by Cattell, Cattell and Cattell (1993). This study assumes that there would be more students who are at-risk of academic failure in this chosen sample than a normative group of students.

This study found that there were significant differences in the use of coping strategies between students of high and low risk of academic failure. High-risk students were found to have significantly lower scores on adaptive coping strategies than students of low risk of academic failure, particularly in adaptive beliefs like perceived academic competency, positive self-esteem and having a learning goal orientation. There was basically little significance between Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) students with the Normal (Academic) students having significantly higher mean scores in adaptive learning strategies.

Results also showed that there was little significant difference in personality traits between the risk groups with only slight differences in reasoning ability and sensitivity. High-risk group have significantly lower scores on reasoning ability. Both groups are also characterised by having a lower than average level of general intelligence. Normal (Academic) students were found to be slightly more extraverted, tensed and have a slightly higher intelligence score than Normal (Technical) who were slightly more rule-consciousness. Both groups have below average levels of general intelligence as compared to the American normative groups of around the same age and level of education.

In general, adaptive coping strategies seem to be positively related with personality traits that are in essence positive affective states like emotional stability, self-control and self-discipline and low anxiety. High scores in maladaptive coping strategies may be linked to high scores in personality traits that are in essence negative affective states like anxiety, apprehension, and emotional instability. Maladaptive coping tends to be also positively related to imagination and privateness. Anova statistics showed that there were no relationships between the use of coping strategies and demographic variables.

The results pointed to implications for early risk identification, curriculum re-design, counselling support, the development of positive affect and adaptive coping strategies in at-risk students.

This dissertation examined coping and related psychological issues of affect and self-efficacy of student nurses. The first aim of the study was to explore coping of Singapore student nurses with respect to specific stressors (clinical and academic) and establish the relationship between adaptive coping and positive affect. The second aim was to provide support for the convergent validity of the Ways of Coping scale (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988), with measures of self-efficacy (general and domain-specific). The study utilized Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) coping theory and Fredrickson’s (1998) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.

Three hundred and five student nurses completed questionnaires on coping strategies used, affect experienced for clinical or academic stressors, general self-efficacy and domain-specific self-efficacy, either clinical or academic domains. Results showed that less adaptive coping strategies, i.e., escape-avoidance, accepting responsibility (selfblame), confrontative coping were correlated positively with negative affect at the p<.05 and .01 levels whereas adaptive strategies, i.e., planful problem-solving, seeking social support and positive reappraisal were correlated positively with positive affect at the p< .01 level. These adaptive strategies were also known as broad-minded coping. Furthermore, general self-efficacy was found to be a significant predictor of positive and negative affect (p<.001). Positive reappraisal and seeking social support also predicted positive affect; while escape-avoidance predicted negative affect (p<.001). These findings provided support for the theory of positive emotions and established positive reappraisal as an adaptive coping strategy in the context of coping of student nurses.

This study also linked general self-efficacy and domain-specific self-efficacy to coping strategies and affect. Results showed that problem-focused coping and positive affect were correlated positively with self-efficacy (general and domain-specific) at the p<.01 level; emotion-focused coping and negative affect were correlated negatively with self-efficacy (general and domain- specific) at the p<.01 and .05 levels. Hence, these findings provided support for the convergent validity of the Ways of Coping scale and the PANAS.

A significant difference was that student nurses used more problem-focused strategies and less emotion-focused strategies for clinical stressors than for academic stressors. Problem-focused coping generated more positive affect. Hence, student nurses in the clinical setting were likely to have benefited from the upward spiral of positive affect, i.e., the more positive affect promoted the use of problem-focused strategies, the more positive emotions were generated. These findings have implications for nurse educators in teaching student nurses adaptive coping. Attention may be given to how student nurses’ positive and negative affect, and self- efficacy may influence the choice of coping strategies.

Perceived competence and control over the environment has been recognised as a potential variable in the occupational stress experience. As such, this study examined the various coping strategies that counselling professionals in Singapore used when faced with occupational stress. Specifically, the research investigates the effect that perceived control has on these coping strategies.

A total of 76 counselling professionals from private and government organisations representing different counselling organisational cultures and structures participated in this study. The participants provided demographic information and completed the Carver COPE measure as well as a modified version of the Therapist Stress Scale. The data provided information regarding coping styles, the level of occupational stress and the perception of control over the various stressors.

The results indicated that problem-focused is the predominant coping strategy used by the counselling professionals in Singapore. Comparison on demographic profiles found that female professionals adopted significantly more emotion-focused coping than the male professionals. Age and work experience appear to be significant contributing factors in maladaptive coping. The results also supported the hypotheses that perception of control is negatively related to stress levels and is positively related to use of problem-focused coping strategies.

This study examined the relationship between parental attributes and their coping outcomes when they are faced with managing and raising a child with special needs. Studies with chronically ill patients, typically developing children with behavioral issues, and children with high functioning Autism such as Asperger Syndrome have found that benefit finding was associated with positive coping outcomes; whereas dysfunctional attributions about children’s misbehaviors and dysfunctional parenting styles were associated with negative parental coping outcomes. Research with parents of special needs children with moderately to severely impaired functioning is limited. Thus, this study sought to understand the relationships between these parental attributes and coping outcomes of adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies used, psychological wellbeing and parental efficacy in this population. A secondary focus was to see how 2 child characteristics, namely ASD diagnosis and behavioral concerns, impacted on these relationships. Using a cross-sectional research design, 302 parents, mostly mothers (78.8%), of children with special needs responded to the invitation to participate in an anonymous paper pencil survey. The age of the parents ranged from 17 to 62 years old. The children’s age ranged from 1 year to 16 years of age. About 60% of them had children with the primary diagnosis of autism; the remaining did not have the diagnosis of autism, but had multiple disabilities including intellectual disabilities. All the children were enrolled in the local early intervention centers or special education schools. Based on parental reports, 70.9% indicated their children had behavioral concerns, and 27.5% did not report any such concerns. This study found that all the parental attributes were significantly correlated with the coping outcomes of positive and negative affect, parental efficacy and maladaptive coping in the expected directions. In addition, ASD diagnosis appeared not to be a significant factor in differentiating parents on these attributes and coping outcomes. Instead, existence of behavioral concerns was linked to negative parental attributes and coping outcomes. After controlling for child characteristics of Diagnosis and Behavioral Concerns, benefit finding was found to be a predictor for 4 out of 5 of the coping outcomes, namely, positive affect, negative affect, parental efficacy and adaptive coping. Dysfunctional parent-casual attributions predicted negative affect, parental efficacy and maladaptive coping. Over-reactive parenting style predicted only positive affect; whereas hostile parenting style predicted maladaptive coping. The findings suggested new areas of intervention and counseling focus that look into modifying parental attributes. A few limitations of this study were also raised, which in turn, pointed to new avenues of academic and action research.