Perception of Stress among Adolescents Living in Poverty and their Coping Strategies: A Correlation Study

Millions of children and adolescents are exposed to the potent stress of living with chronic poverty. The present research has made an attempt to study the perception of stress among adolescents living in poverty and its correlation with their coping strategies the study has been done on the 120 adolescents of the urban area of Ludhiana District who were living in conditions of poverty. Stress scale developed by Cohen (1983) and Proactive Coping Inventory developed by Greenglass (1996) were used to measure stress and coping respectively among adolescents. Results revealed that major proportion of urban adolescents perceived average level of stress followed by high category and a very small proportion recorded low profile of stress and female adolescents perceived significantly more stress as compared to the male adolescents. Correlation analysis between perceived stress scores and coping strategies among adolescents revealed that proactive coping and strategic planning were significantly negatively correlated with stress among males, females and overall sample. It means that when the adolescents use proactive coping and strategic planning their level of stress reduces. Correlation between other coping strategies (reflective, preventive coping, emotional support seeking) and stress among total adolescents and both the genders were non- significant. Whereas, among the total sample and male adolescents, stress was significantly positively correlated with instrumental support seeking and avoidance coping.