Stress Across The Adult Lifespan: Variations In Coping Styles And Effectiveness

Background: This study investigates the level of stress and most frequently used coping style in adulthood. Objective: The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the stress level on both working and studying males and females separately. To study the coping styles used most frequently in working and studying males and females separately. Method: This study adopts a cross-sectional design. The participation pool comprises of 120 adults (60 males and 60 females) between 20 to 30 years. Which is divided in 30 males working, 30 males studying, 30 females working and 30 females studying. Results: The ANOVA results indicate that there are no significant differences in stress levels among the groups, as evidenced by an F-value of 0.407 and a P-value of 0.748, leading us to fail to reject the null hypothesis. In contrast, there are significant differences in coping strategies, with a between-group F-value of 3.83 and a Pvalue of 0.01, indicating at least one group uses a notably different coping strategy. Additionally, a high F-value of 19.45 and a P-value of 0.00 suggest that some coping strategies are used more frequently than others. However, the interaction effect shows an F-value of 0.94 and a P-value of 0.58, implying that group membership does not significantly influence the choice of coping strategies. Specifically, Group A1 (Working Females) predominantly uses Active Coping (8.95%), while Group A2 (Studying Females) prefers Acceptance (9.11%). Both Group B1 (Working Males) and Group B2 (Studying Males) identify Planning as their primary strategy, with Group B1 using it 9.27% of the time compared to 8.84% for Group B2. Conclusion: Variations in coping strategies were observed, these differences reflected distinct patterns across groups rather than any significant influence of group membership on coping style selection.