A Quasi-Mixed Methods Investigation of Adolescents’ Coping with Social Status Insecurity and Its Mediation Role in Relation to Health Problems

The present study employed a quasi-mixed methods approach to explore adolescents’ coping strategies for social status insecurity and further examined the mediation roles of positive and negative coping in the relationships between social status insecurity and physical health outcomes, specifically subjective health complaints and sleep problems. Participants were 134 (71 girls) sixth to eighth graders from a suburban public middle school in the Midwestern United States. They completed measures assessing social status insecurity, coping strategies, and health outcomes. In addition, they answered an open-ended question describing their coping approaches to managing social status insecurity for quantitative analysis. The results indicated that social status insecurity was correlated with greater health complaints and sleep problems. The mediation results showed that after accounting for gender and self-rated status, these significant associations were mediated through negative coping only. The qualitative findings complemented the quantitative findings with a more detailed picture of adolescents’ use of coping strategies in response to social status insecurity. In summary, social status insecurity was linked to increased health problems through greater use of negative coping strategies. These findings highlight the importance of explicitly addressing negative coping behaviors in interventions aimed at helping adolescents manage insecure feelings related to their peer social status.