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Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation of high school

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Article  in  Social Psychology of Education · November 2018

DOI: 10.1007/s11218-018-9456-8

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Social Psychology of Education (2018) 21:1061–1080
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-018-9456-8

Personality, coping, and school well‑being: an investigation

of high school students

Paul Evans1   · Andrew J. Martin1 · Zorana Ivcevic2

Received: 10 September 2017 / Accepted: 13 June 2018 / Published online: 2 July 2018
© Springer Nature B.V. 2018

Abstract
With a growing interest in well-being as an outcome of schooling, there is an
increased need for research on how to enable it in students’ academic lives. This
study examined personality and coping strategies as predictors of students’ well-
being outcomes at school using structural equation modelling. Students (N = 328)
completed measures of personality and coping strategies, and then approximately
6 months later reported on their satisfaction with school and subjective well-being.
Results indicated that, along with personality and sociodemographics, productive
coping strategies were associated with school satisfaction and subjective well-being
6  months later. The findings suggest that coping strategies used by adolescents
to deal with the stresses of school have important consequences. Interventions to
increase school students’ use of productive coping strategies may have meaningful
impacts on their well-being.

Keywords  Personality · Coping · Well-being · School satisfaction

1 Introduction

There is increasing concern for psychological well-being—a cognitive and emo-

tional appraisal of one’s life (Diener et al. 2003)—as one of the so-called non-cogni-
tive outcomes of schooling, alongside the traditional cognitive outcomes of learning
and achievement. It is well-established that school and its demands place significant
pressure on students and is characterized by academic challenge and adversity (Mar-
tin and Marsh 2008). The ways students cope with these demands have significant
implications for their well-being (Frydenberg 2008). When students use adaptive
and productive strategies to cope with stress, for example, they tend to experience

* Paul Evans
paul.evans@unsw.edu.au
1
School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
2
Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
 1062 P. Evans et al.

better psychological well-being outcomes than when they use maladaptive strate-
gies (Frydenberg 2008). Notably, the process of coping with stress is known to be
influenced by personality, where various personality traits are associated with cop-
ing (Carver and Connor-Smith 2010). However, although some work has been done
with college students (Aspinwall and Taylor 1992; Perera and DiGiacomo 2015),
little is known about how ways in which high school students cope with stress might
mediate the effects of personality on well-being outcomes.
This study therefore aims to examine the relationship between personality traits
and coping, and how these predict important well-being outcomes in the context of
high school. We draw on personality, coping, and well-being theorizing to hypoth-
esize a process model that may contribute to broad knowledge which itself may
eventually identify psycho-social targets for attention and intervention. This hypoth-
esized model broadly reflects the approach outlined by Matthews et  al. (2006) in
which dispositional constructs (e.g., personality) affect outcomes (e.g., affective and
well-being outcomes) via mediating processes (e.g., self-regulatory processes such
as coping). In particular, broad types of coping behaviors may have differential out-
comes. Given that the cost of teaching coping strategies is relatively low (Fryden-
berg 2008; see Discussion for further discussion of the implications), yields from
such practices may be considered worthwhile to the extent that the strategies are
effective in improving well-being, particularly when certain personality character-
istics might tend to predispose students towards unfavorable outcomes. Identifying
key personal factors relevant to school well-being thus forms the rationale for the
present study.

1.1 Coping with stress

Coping tends to be characterized in terms of a process encompassing the experience

of stress, its appraisal, and the ensuing cognitive and behavioral responses. People
experience stress when they engage in situations or tasks that exceed their abilities
to manage them (Carver and Connor-Smith 2010; Folkman 1984). In the context of
goal-directed behavior, stress leads to a primary appraisal (Lazarus and Folkman
1984) of the personal relevance of goals. Lazarus and Folkman distinguish between
four types of primary appraisal: harm/loss (e.g., of an injury or damage); threat (e.g.,
of the potential for harm/loss); challenge (e.g., for a growth or mastery opportu-
nity); and benign (where no further appraisal or action is undertaken). A second-
ary appraisal follows, leading to the person evaluating their ability to control the
stressor and choosing strategies to pursue.
It is this latter part of the process—the behavioral response—that is the focus
of the present study. In a school context, the coping strategies and behaviors used
by students have particular academic consequences. For example, behaviors that
lead students to focus on schoolwork (e.g., problem-solving, help-seeking) are more
likely to lead to greater learning and success at school, while behaviors that distract
students from schoolwork (e.g., procrastination, rumination) are more likely to lead
to negative consequences for learning and well-being (e.g., Bordwine and Huebner
2010; Suldo et  al. 2008). The behavioral response aspect of the process is also a

13
Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation… 1063

worthwhile focus for research because it is amenable to direct, effective, and inex-
pensive intervention (Frydenberg 2008). Importantly, although behavioral coping
strategies are known to influence learning outcomes, less is known about well-being
outcomes in the school context, which the present study sought to address.
A multitude of coping strategies are available to the individual (e.g., seeking
social support, procrastination, using drugs or alcohol, planning). These specific
coping strategies are not inherently effective or ineffective in all situations—indeed,
coping mechanisms require a fit between the situational appraisal and choice of
actions (Lazarus and Folkman 1984). For example, a student awaiting the result
of an exam might use a ‘wait-and-see’ approach or attempt to distract him/herself
from the stressor, which would probably be appropriate and adaptive in that par-
ticular context. On the other hand, if this student were preparing for the exam, the
same approach would be maladaptive. Despite this, higher-order categories of cop-
ing strategies create useful distinctions. For example, coping strategies are generally
categorized into higher-order factors such as engagement coping and disengagement
coping (Carver et al. 1989), or problem-focused or emotion-focused coping (Lazarus
and Folkman 1984).
One of the more prominent distinctions in research on adolescent coping (the
developmental target in our study) is between productive and non-productive cop-
ing (Frydenberg and Lewis 1994). “Productive” coping refers to “direct attempts to
deal with the problem, with or without reference to others” (Frydenberg 2008, p. 48)
and includes behaviors such as seeking social support, focusing on solutions to the
problem, working hard to achieve goals. “Non-productive coping” refers to “dys-
functional aspects of coping” (p. 48) and includes behaviors such as worrying or
ruminating on the problem, wishful thinking, or withdrawing socially to keep issues
to oneself. Given that the coping process is defined as including the experience of
stress, its appraisal, and the ensuing behavioral and cognitive processes, these cop-
ing factors are considered as the behavioral aspect of the coping process, while their
consequences (e.g., in this study, happiness and satisfaction with school) are consid-
ered as outcomes. Productive coping is generally seen as leading to more desirable
outcomes, but may be moderated by other factors such as students’ beliefs on how
controllable the stressful situation is (Conway and Terry 1992).
Effective coping (whether determined by ‘productive’ versus ‘unproductive’ cop-
ing or some other distinction) is particularly important for adolescents in the school
context, because school places stressful demands on students with consequences for
their achievement, long-term future, and psychological well-being. In one study of
coping and adjustment, Ebata and Moos (1991) found that adolescents who used
avoidance strategies rather than approach strategies to manage stress were more
likely to be depressed or exhibit problem behavior. The specific coping strategy of
social help-seeking was also found to predict global life satisfaction in a longitudi-
nal study of adolescents (Saha et  al. 2014). Similarly, coping has been associated
with positive and negative affect and, to a lesser extent, global life satisfaction and
GPA in high school students (MacCann et al. 2012). In work by Suldo et al. (2008),
high-achieving students perceived significantly more stress than their general-
education peers, and experienced better life satisfaction outcomes when they used
positive-appraisal coping (e.g., trying to see the good side of a difficult situation)

13
 1064 P. Evans et al.

than negative-avoidance coping (e.g., using drugs or alcohol) in response to stress.

Achievement is also influenced by coping, with problem-focused coping positively
predicting achievement, emotion-focused coping negatively predicting it, and both
types of coping partially mediating the relationship between emotional intelligence
and achievement (MacCann et al. 2011). These findings, which overlap with the pro-
ductive versus unproductive distinction, demonstrate the importance of coping in
relation to academic outcomes.
As may be gleaned from the various descriptions of coping above, there is a mul-
titude of ways coping can be classified. These include higher order categories such
as function (e.g., the degree to which coping focuses on problems versus emotional
aspects of stress) or effectiveness (e.g., the degree to which coping is productive ver-
sus unproductive). They may also include lower-order categories related to the spe-
cific coping mechanisms used (e.g., procrastination; seeking help from others). Not-
withstanding emerging hierarchical models (Skinner et al. 2003) integrating various
dimensions of targets of coping (e.g., the self versus the social context); the level of
stress (e.g., threat or challenge); and the range of possible responses (e.g., emotional
responses and behaviors), productive and unproductive is the category adopted in
the present study as an extension of prior research on adolescent coping.
Coping behaviors, therefore, are critically important aspects of the coping pro-
cess. Coping behaviors have considerable implications not only for achievement
but also for students’ psychological well-being. Importantly, intervention research
suggests that coping behaviors can be taught effectively (Frydenberg 2004, 2008;
Frydenberg and Lewis 2000). Furthermore, as noted earlier, coping behaviors may
be an important mediational process between broader personality dispositions and
school-related outcomes (Matthews et al. 2006). Given this, we test a model where
personality traits predict well-being outcomes (subjective happiness and satisfaction
with school) and their effect on coping behaviors.

1.2 Subjective happiness and satisfaction with school

The advent of positive psychology in recent decades has seen an increased empha-
sis on well-being (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000), framed by the idea that
focusing on improving indicators of subjective well-being yields better outcomes
than focusing on psychopathology or mental illness. Subjective well-being is gener-
ally viewed as a combination of the experience of general positive affect (subjective
happiness), global life satisfaction, and life satisfaction within the context of various
domains (e.g., schooling; Diener et al. 2003). Since subjective happiness is shown to
be discriminable from life satisfaction (Lucas et al. 1996), the present study exam-
ines both subjective happiness and the school facet of life satisfaction as salient indi-
cators of student well-being. Indeed, both can also be affected by coping effectively
with stress (MacCann et al. 2012; Saha et al. 2014), likely because effective coping
shortens the length of time required to recover from stressful situations, thus reduc-
ing the negative affect associated with ineffective coping strategies and more rapidly
returning to ‘baseline’ levels of happiness (Diener et al. 2006).

13
Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation… 1065

Subjective happiness is “among the most salient and important human disposi-
tions” (Lyubomirsky and Lepper 1999, p. 138) and is a relatively stable characteris-
tic influenced by macro characteristics rather than moment to moment events. There
are individual differences in general subjective happiness, and although there are
some people who are generally happy all of the time, even happy people tend to still
need to use strategies to maintain their happiness (Lyubomirsky and Tucker 1998).
Happiness comes from good experiences in life, but reciprocal relations also appear
to exist: happiness itself engenders success through sociability and social activity,
altruism, and liking of self and others (Lyubomirsky et al. 2005). According to the
broaden-and-build perspective on positive affect (Fredrickson 2001), these recipro-
cal relations exist because positive emotions broaden people’s thought-action reper-
toires, giving them a broader range of resources with which to face challenges and
making them more creative, efficient, and productive. As a school outcome, happi-
ness thus has important implications for learning and ongoing achievement.
School satisfaction is a domain-specific component of life satisfaction. Life sat-
isfaction is an individual’s conscious evaluation of the quality of their life and it is
both cognitive and affective in nature (Bradley et al. 2014). The conditions that lead
to life satisfaction include environmental, familial, and social conditions such as a
healthy lifestyle, exercise and physical health, and participation in social activities
(Proctor et al. 2009), while demographic variables such as age, gender, and socio-
economic status contribute only weakly (Huebner 1994). Satisfaction with school,
the domain-specific form of life satisfaction, is thus seen as a product of the school
conditions and related behaviors in the school context. Low life satisfaction for ado-
lescents is associated with outcomes such as delinquent and aggressive behavior in
response to stress (Suldo and Huebner 2004), and violent behaviors such as fighting
and carrying a weapon (Valois et al. 2001). In contrast, high life satisfaction is asso-
ciated with higher school achievement, better attitudes towards school and teach-
ers, higher self-esteem, less anxiety and depression, and greater sense of personal
control (Gilman and Huebner 2006), fewer school rule violations, greater recogni-
tions, academic honors, and grades (Ivcevic and Brackett 2014), and higher cogni-
tive engagement (Lewis et al. 2011).
The present study thus explored domain-specific (school) satisfaction, along with
subjective happiness, as outcomes of coping behaviors in response to stress. As
noted previously, school well-being is a psychosocial outcome not only of coping,
but of a process in which coping mediates personality and other dispositional factors
that may directly influence school well-being (Matthews et al. 2006). Thus we now
proceed to discuss the effects of personality on psychosocial outcomes as mediated
by coping processes.

1.3 The role of personality

Personality is a key individual differences construct defining characteristic thoughts,

feelings, and behavioral dispositions (Connor-Smith and Flachsbart 2007), and is there-
fore relevant for both coping and subjective well-being. Indeed, in early psychodynamic
theories of personality and coping, the two were equated—coping behaviors were seen

13
 1066 P. Evans et al.

as trait-like behavioral responses to internal or external conflict (Suls et al. 1996). In the
mediational model of Matthews et al. (2006) referred to earlier, personality is a disposi-
tional factor which influences processes such as self-regulation and coping, and in turn,
affective and behavioral outcomes. One of the more prominent paradigms for conceptu-
alizing personality traits, the Big-5, is a set of traits comprising extraversion, a tendency
to seek stimulation in the company of others; agreeableness, a tendency to be compas-
sionate and cooperative; conscientiousness, having preferences for organization, dis-
cipline, and achievement; neuroticism, being prone to vulnerability and anxiety; and
openness to experience, a general appreciation for novelty, curiosity, and interest (John
et al. 2008; McCrae and Costa 2008).
In relation to the process model examined in the present study, we contend that per-
sonality is an important consideration for both coping and subjective well-being. In the
context of coping, the traits of extraversion and conscientiousness tend to predict adap-
tive coping, while neuroticism predicts most kinds of maladaptive coping (Carver and
Connor-Smith 2010). In the context of subjective well-being, outcomes are influenced
particularly by extraversion (positively) and neuroticism (negatively; Diener et  al.
2003). The personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism also predict life satisfac-
tion (the latter negatively), but some suggest these relationships may also be mediated
by social self-efficacy (Fogle et al. 2002; Proctor et al. 2009). In the educational con-
text, profiles of teacher personality were found to predict satisfaction and well-being
outcomes (Perera et  al. 2018). In a study of adolescents, global life satisfaction was
predicted most strongly (negatively) by neuroticism (Suldo et  al. 2015; Weber and
Huebner 2015), but personality predictors of domain-specific satisfaction varied: In the
‘friends’ domain, extraversion made the strongest prediction; in the ‘school’ domain,
openness explained more variance (Weber and Huebner 2015).
It is thus evident that personality plays a role in both coping and well-being. How-
ever, no substantial research has investigated the role that coping might play as a
mediator in the personality → school well-being relationship. Tkach and Lyubomir-
sky (2006) found that specific happiness-enhancing strategies partially mediated the
personality → happiness relationship. Perera et al. (2015) found that coping strategies
mediated the relationship between personality and academic adjustment and, in turn,
achievement. Similarly, Perera and DiGiacomo (2015) found that engagement and dis-
engagement coping mediated dispositional characteristics (trait emotional intelligence)
and academic outcomes (adjustment and achievement). These findings suggest that in
particular cognitive and non-cognitive domains, there may be strategies within adoles-
cents’ repertoire that can mediate behaviors associated with dispositional traits. A pro-
cess examining potential targets for educational and psychological practice therefore
ought to consider both coping behaviors and personality influences. This is a process
which the present investigation seeks to address.

1.4 Aims of the present study

The literature reviewed above demonstrates the importance of coping strategies for
adolescents’ well-being outcomes in the context of school. In addition, it suggests
that personality factors may influence both coping behaviors used by adolescents

13
Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation… 1067

as well as well-being outcomes. The present study aims to extend this research by
understanding the potential role that both personality and coping behaviors have
in explaining student well-being outcomes, while also considering how these cop-
ing behaviors might mediate the influence of personality on well-being. The novel
aspect of this model is the particular focus on differentiating between the influence
of personality and coping strategies as influences on subjective well-being out-
comes, and also identifying broad types of coping behavior strategies that are salient
in this process and thus worthy of applied attention.
Figure  1 presents the hypothesized structural model that seeks to examine the
extent to which personality explains subjective happiness and school satisfaction,
and the role that coping mechanisms may play in mediating these relationships.
Given the range of personality influences identified in the literature on both cop-
ing behaviors and on subjective well-being outcomes, all personality factors were
hypothesized to influence both types of coping strategies and both well-being out-
comes. Similarly, both productive and unproductive coping behaviors were hypoth-
esized to influence both well-being outcomes.

2 Method

2.1 Participants

The sample was drawn from a school in the northeastern region of the United States
at which 357 students were enrolled. The high school is a private school comprised
of students from relatively high socio-economic backgrounds. Most students (74%)
identified as white or Caucasian. All students at the school were invited to par-
ticipate in the study. Participants were students for whom it was possible to obtain

Fig. 1  Hypothesized structural model

13
 1068 P. Evans et al.

parental consent after two reminders (if students were less than 18  years old) and
those who provided informed consents themselves (if students were 18 years old).
Students were drawn from grades 9 through 12. The final sample of students who
consented and completed the survey consisted of 328 students. Forty-three percent
of participants were female. The mean age was 16.4 years (SD = 1.3).
Students were informed about the study during their advisory periods and had an
opportunity to ask any questions from their academic advisors. A researcher (3rd
author) was at the school and available to students in case of any questions or con-
cerns at the time of assessment. After an advisory period, students were sent a link
to the web-based survey and asked to complete the measures in groups of 15–20
students. A teacher was present in each classroom were students were taking the
assessments.
Data from multiple assessments was matched by asking students to enter their
school ID number at the beginning of each set of measures. The list matching stu-
dent names and IDs was stored on a password protected computer and in a locked
cabinet. Data files included only numerical codes.

2.2 Measures

2.2.1 Personality

Personality was measured using the Big-5 Inventory (BFI; John et al. 1991, 2008).
The BFI asks the respondent to respond to 44 items based on five personality traits
in response to the question stem, “I am someone who…” (e.g., “is talkative” for
extraversion; “is helpful and unselfish with others” for agreeableness, “does a thor-
ough job” for conscientiousness, “can be tense” for neuroticism, and “is curious
about many different things” for openness). Participants responded on a Likert scale
ranging from 1 (“disagree strongly”) to 5 (“agree strongly”). Items are designed to
load onto the factors openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and
neuroticism. The BFI has been previously successfully used with children and ado-
lescents (e.g., Soto et al. 2008; Soto and Tackett 2015) and validated against other
Big Five instruments (e.g., Soto and John 2009). While other well validated instru-
ments for personality in children and adolescents exist, the benefit of using the BFI
is that the same instrument can be used for different ages (and has been used in per-
sonality development studies from ages 10 to 65; Soto et al. 2011). This can enable
researchers to compare results across age groups more easily.

2.2.2 Academic coping

The Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS; Frydenberg and Lewis 1996) was used to
examine the productive and unproductive strategies used by adolescents in the aca-
demic context. The ACS asks respondents to rate 18 items such as “work at solving
the problem to the best of my ability” (productive) and “worry about what will hap-
pen with me” (unproductive) on the extent to which they use them (5-point response
options ranging from “not used” to “used a great deal”). To examine productive and

13
Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation… 1069

unproductive strategies in the academic context, students were asked to identify a

specific school-related concern or worry. Although this generates an idiosyncratic
stimulus for each student, the relevant research literature documents a consist-
ent response pattern to the scale, and minimal difference between when the scale
is administered with students responding to a prescribed concern and when they
respond to their own choice of concern (Frydenberg 2008; but see also Analysis and
Limitations).

2.2.3 Subjective happiness

Students also responded to the Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lep-
per 1999). In this scale, four items assess subjective happiness by asking the stu-
dents questions such as “in general, I consider myself…” and to rate themselves
from 1, “not a happy person,” to 7, “a very happy person.” The Subjective Happi-
ness Scale has been previously successfully used with adolescent samples. In fact,
one of the samples in the initial scale development and validation was a U.S. high
school sample (Lyubomirski and Lepper 1999). The scale has also been used with
adolescents in applied clinical work (e.g., evaluating mindfulness training for ado-
lescents with externalizing disorders; Bögels et al. 2008), in cross-cultural research
(e.g., Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal 2014; Uusitalo-Malmivaara 2012), and in
diverse samples of U.S. adolescents (e.g., Burrow and Hill 2011; Vela et al. 2017).

2.2.4 Satisfaction with school

Satisfaction with school was assessed using the school-oriented subscale of the Mul-
tidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS; Huebner 1991, 1994). The
school subscale consists of 8 items, for example, “I like going to school” and each
item is rated on a 6-point scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. The
scale has been used and validated extensively in similar contexts with adolescents
(Huebner 1994, 2004).

2.2.5 Additional covariates

Further variables may be correlated with the substantive factors of interest in this
model and thus artificially bias model estimates. Therefore, we accounted for these
by including them in the model as covariates (i.e., predictive of all other factors in
the model). Age, sex (male vs. female), and GPA were included in this way. We
accounted for any potential bias of the way students are grouped in the school by
including grade as an additional covariate.

2.3 Procedure

Procedures for this study were approved by the university Institutional Review
Board. The study draws on data gathered from a larger study in the school. For the
items reported here, students completed surveys in class on two occasions across

13
 1070 P. Evans et al.

the academic year. The first occasion was early in the fall semester at which time
the students completed items related to age, gender, personality, and academic cop-
ing. The second occasion was approximately 6 months later, in spring of the same
school year at which time students completed items related to subjective happiness
and satisfaction with school. Students’ GPA data are based on their performance in
the fall term.

2.4 Analysis

The hypothesized structural model was tested using Mplus version 8 (Muthén and
Muthén 2017). In order to attain reasonable statistical power, and to appropriately
model the idiosyncratic nature of the coping measure, the constructs were mod-
elled using item parcels each comprised of 3–4 indicators. For the structural model,
a ‘fully forward’ approach was used, with covariates (age, gender, GPA) and per-
sonality measures predicting productive coping strategies and unproductive coping
strategies, and school satisfaction and subjective happiness; and with productive and
unproductive coping strategies predicting school satisfaction and subjective happi-
ness. Correlations between error terms of personality measures, of coping meas-
ures, and of well-being measures were freely estimated. The criteria used to evalu-
ate acceptable model fit included RMSEA (> 0.08) and CFI (< 0.90) (Marsh et al.
1996); the Chi square value (non-significance indicating model fit) is reported but
we note that the Chi square value is almost always significant in moderately com-
plex models (Marsh et al. 2004). All beta coefficients reported in Results are stand-
ardized. The model was tested using the default Maximum Likelihood estimator in
MPlus (Muthén and Muthén 2017).

3 Results

3.1 Descriptive statistics

Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for all factors. Skewness and kurtosis for all var-
iables were in an acceptable range, suggesting approximately normal distributions.
Reliability estimates (Cronbach’s alpha) ranged from 0.636 to 0.849 (see Table 1).
For brevity, here we report significant correlations among substantive variables
in the hypothesized model (personality, productive coping, unproductive coping,
school satisfaction, and subjective happiness); all other correlations are presented in
Table 2. Significant correlations were observed between hypothesized factors in the
model: Conscientiousness was correlated positively with productive coping strate-
gies (r = 0.166, P = 0.028) and school satisfaction (r = 0.170, P < 0.022); extraversion
was correlated positively with productive coping strategies (r = 0.228, P = 0.003)
and subjective happiness (r = 0.394, P < 0.001), and negatively with unproductive
coping strategies (r = − 0.184, P = 0.020); agreeableness was correlated positively
with productive coping strategies (r = 0.195, P = 0.020) and subjective happi-
ness (r = 0.322, P < 0.001), and negatively with T1 unproductive coping strategies

13
Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation… 1071

Table 1  Descriptive statistics
α M SD Skew Kurtosis

Age – 16.410 1.336 − 0.001 − 0.603

GPA – 3.211 0.356 − 0.934 1.975
Openness 0.777 3.557 0.605 0.028 − 0.577
Conscientiousness 0.765 3.376 0.596 0.106 − 0.339
Extraversion 0.814 3.394 0.699 − 0.142 − 0.541
Agreeableness 0.768 3.680 0.580 − 0.120 − 0.115
Neuroticism 0.755 2.769 0.662 − 0.099 − 0.084
Coping: Productive strategies 0.636 3.305 0.531 − 0.075 0.109
Coping: Unproductive strategies 0.684 2.850 0.676 − 0.060 0.063
Subjective happiness 0.800 4.894 1.100 − 0.465 0.596
School satisfaction 0.849 3.911 0.969 − 0.289 − 0.020

GPA grade point average

(r = − 0.167, P = 0.048); and neuroticism was correlated positively with unproduc-

tive coping strategies (r = 0.398, P < 0.001) and negatively with subjective happi-
ness (r = − 0.428, P < 0.001). Productive coping strategies were correlated positively
with subjective happiness (r = 0.303, P < 0.001) and school satisfaction (r = 0.311,
P < 0.001), while unproductive coping strategies were correlated negatively with
subjective happiness (r = − 0.241, P = 0.004) and school satisfaction (r = − 0.249,
P = 0.005).

3.2 Structural equation modeling

As noted in Methods, a ‘fully forward’ approach was used, with covariates (age,
gender, GPA) and personality measures predicting productive coping strategies and
unproductive coping strategies, and productive and unproductive coping strategies
predicting school satisfaction and subjective happiness. All predictive parameters
reported are standardized path coefficients (significant paths shown in Fig. 2). The
model met the criteria for acceptable model fit described under Analsyis, χ2  (df
390) = 679.512, P < 0.001; RMSEA = 0.048 (95% CI 0.042, 0.053); CFI = 0.906;
TLI = 0.880.
Some hypothesized paths were supported between personality factors and pro-
ductive and unproductive coping strategies, and unproductive coping strategies, in
turn, predicted outcomes of school satisfaction and subjective happiness (all beta
paths are shown in Table 3 and a diagram comprising significant substantive param-
eters is shown in Fig. 2). No modifications (e.g., to refine the hypothesized model
in order to improve model fit) were made, and all originally hypothesized param-
eters were retained (including nonsignificant paths). Specifically, productive coping
was positively predicted by extraversion (β = 0.226, P = 0.018) and conscientious-
ness (β = 0.356, P = 0.003). Unproductive coping was predicted by neuroticism
(β = 0.27, P < 0.002). School satisfaction was predicted positively by productive
coping (β = 0.330, P = 0.009) and conscientiousness (β = 0.265, nearing significance

13
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13
Table 2  Correlation coefficients
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Gender 1
Age .241*** 1
GPA − 0.269*** − 0.133* 1
Grade level − 0.138* 0.839 − 0.043 1
Extraversion − 0.052 − 0.127* − 0.022 − 0.175** 1
Conscientiousness − 0.184** − 0.092 0 0.012 0.01 1
Openness − 0.059 − 0.033 0.121 − 0.044 0.209*** 0.076 1
Neuroticism − 0.17* − 0.029 0.133 − 0.028 − 0.229*** 0.017 − 0.052 1
Agreeableness − 0.125 − 0.023 0.051 0.055 0.183** 0.311*** 0.12 − 0.345*** 1
Productive Coping 0.166* 0.009 0.01 0.018 0.228*** 0.314*** 0.164* − 0.012 0.195** 1
Unproductive Coping 0.04 0.051 − 0.212** 0.034 − 0.184* − 0.147 0.014 0.398*** − 0.167* 0.117 1
Subjective Happiness 0.032 0.114 − 0.029 0.102 0.394*** 0.092 0.05 − 0.428*** 0.322*** 0.303*** − 0.241** 1
School satisfaction − 0.17* − 0.176* 0.313 − 0.122 0.107 0.423 − 0.034 − 0.147 0.065 0.311*** − 0.249** 0.238**

GPA grade point average

*P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001
P. Evans et al.
Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation… 1073

Fig. 2  Final path model from SEM. Notes. Only significant paths shown (all other paths are presented in
Table 3). Covariates (age, gender, grade level, GPA) predicting coping and school well-being are mod-
eled, but not shown. Labels represent standardized path coefficients. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001

at P = 0.052). Subjective happiness was predicted positively by productive coping

(β = 0.262, P = 0.037) and extraversion (β = 0.261, P = 0.006) and negatively by
neuroticism (β = − 0.301, P = 0.008). There was a gender effect (male) for produc-
tive coping (β = 0.259, P = 0.003) and a prior GPA effect on unproductive coping

Table 3  Standardized path coefficients for all factors from the SEM

Productive coping Unproductive School satisfaction Subjective happiness
coping

Sex 0.259** 0.038 0.330** − 0.075

Age − 0.027 − 0.023 − 0.147 0.134
GPA − 0.106 − 0.251** − 0.174 0.013
School year 0.037 0.034 − 0.061 0.027
Extraversion 0.226* − 0.110 0.163 0.261**
Agreeableness 0.111 0.022 − 0.194 0.117
Conscientiousness 0.356** − 0.056 0.265* − 0.040
Neuroticism 0.136 0.427** − 0.218 − 0.301**
Openness 0.112 0.094 − 0.127 − 0.073
Productive coping 0.330** 0.262*
Unproductive − 0.147 − 0.091
Coping

GPA grade point average

*P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001

13
 1074 P. Evans et al.

(β = − 0.251, P = 0.006). There were no significant age or grade level effects. The
model explained 24% and 25% of variance in productive and unproductive coping
respectively, and 37 and 38% of variance in subjective happiness and school satis-
faction respectively.

4 Discussion

The present study found that the ways adolescents cope with stress at school is
significantly linked to their well-being and that both of these are predicted by per-
sonality. We suggest our findings are particularly noteworthy because our school
well-being measures were administered one semester after the personality and cop-
ing measures, reinforcing the fact that students’ subsequent well-being is indeed
impacted by prior personality and coping factors. Thus, drawing on distinct concep-
tual frameworks (coping, personality, well-being) and collecting related data across
time, we contend the study identifies a process model that is a potential means of
guiding practitioner decision-making about the focus of interventions for coping
strategies.

4.1 Findings of particular note

In regard to personality, it was found that conscientiousness predicted school sat-

isfaction, while extraversion (positively) and neuroticism (negatively) predicted
subjective happiness. Personality also predicted coping: Conscientiousness and
extraversion predicted productive coping, while neuroticism predicted unproductive
coping. The present study suggests that by adopting particular kinds of coping strat-
egies, especially productive coping strategies, students of different personality dis-
positions are able to have a more positive subjective experience of school.
The role of school well-being as an important non-cognitive outcome of school-
ing has been articulated by previous research (Huebner 2004; Lyubomirsky 2001).
The present study aligns with several existing findings in the literature showing that
well-being is broadly influenced by coping processes and global well-being (Ebata
and Moos 1991; MacCann et al. 2012; Saha et al. 2014). Also consistent with pre-
vious research (Carver and Connor-Smith 2010; Diener et al. 2003), we found that
personality was linked to coping in important ways.
The fruitfulness of using multiple measures of school well-being (Diener et  al.
1999)—in this case, satisfaction with school and subjective well-being—was dem-
onstrated in that productive coping predicted both these outcomes, while unproduc-
tive coping did not. This holds implications for intervention such that the targets for
where to intervene may differ depending on whether the intention is to improve the
use of unproductive coping strategies or to establish productive coping strategies.
For example, whereas the use of unproductive coping strategies may lead to lower
learning in some research (e.g., Suldo et  al. 2008; but not MacCann et  al. 2012),
our study of school satisfaction and subjective well-being suggested it was not so
negatively salient. It seems that to improve subjective happiness or satisfaction

13
Personality, coping, and school well-being: an investigation… 1075

with school, productive coping strategies have substantial influence. Examples of

psycho-educational practice along these lines might include explicit teaching of
particular strategies that are known to be productive, such as help-seeking, focus-
ing on the problem at hand, planning, and so on. Encouragingly, such intervention
is demonstrated to be effective in improving adolescents’ productive coping strate-
gies (Frydenberg and Lewis 2000). However, caution is warranted for the finding
that unproductive coping had no influence on affective outcomes, as underlying the
structural model there are still moderate negative correlations between unproductive
coping and both school satisfaction and subjective well-being (see Table 2).
Beyond the documented effects of personality on both coping and well-being
(Carver and Connor-Smith 2010; Connor-Smith and Flachsbart 2007; Diener 1996;
Tkach and Lyubomirsky 2006), the kinds of coping strategies used to deal with
stress may mediate the effects of personality, although we note that the present data
do not show evidence of a mediation effect. This holds implications for intervention
in that productive coping, particularly those strategies that tend to be used by con-
scientious students, may be a useful target for interventions to increase school well-
being. Such interventions are not expensive to implement, however in a crowded
curriculum, the idea of teaching psychological processes such as coping might be
controversial given the numerous other curriculum expectations. Thus, as further
evidence emerges of the potential benefits of coping, the efficacy of coping inter-
ventions should be weighed against not only economic costs but other costs of inte-
grating them into the curriculum, such as the overall balance of explicit teaching of
‘content’ versus psychosocial and metacognitive skills. It is worth noting that such
intervention programs are becoming more prominent in educational settings with
promising indicators of their general effectiveness (Durlak et  al. 2011; Hoffmann
et al. in press)
Also to note is that students higher in neuroticism tended to be less happy, which
did not appear to be explained by the coping relationship. This suggests there may
be important other psychological processes more closely related to emotional self-
regulation involved in addressing the negative effects on well-being for students
high in neuroticism. With this in mind, we point to free trait theory which suggests
that implicit dispositions—such as personality—are not immutable (Jorm 1989; B.
R. Little 1996; B. R. Little and Joseph 2007). Thus, whilst recognizing neuroticism
and other traits as individual dispositions, practitioners would look to implement
strategies to reduce anxiety, for example, that may in turn reduce their inclination to
unproductive coping.

4.2 Limitations and future directions

There are some limitations to consider when interpreting findings and these limi-
tations have implications for future research. First, our study centered on the one
school for data collection purposes and thus future research is needed to understand
the various manifestations of personality characteristics in the coping processes of
students in other school contexts (e.g., public schools, less affluent). Related to this
is the need for future research to examine longitudinal aspects of the process we

13
 1076 P. Evans et al.

examined. Although our study was longitudinal in the sense that data were obtained
across time, providing some suggestion of causal ordering, a fully cross-lagged lon-
gitudinal design, including autocorrelations of all variables, is necessary to lend
stronger support to the findings. In relation to interpreting the current findings, this
limitation means that the estimates of the structural and indirect effects in the model
may be upwardly biased.
A second limitation is in the sample size. While the sample size was adequate for
the analytical approach adopted in the current study, a larger and more diverse sam-
ple would enable more sophisticated modelling and potential generality of effects.
Third, our measures were assessed using self-reports. Future examinations look-
ing at others’ assessments (e.g., from teachers) will offer additional insight into the
constructs and their relationships, though clearly the internal nature of constructs
such as coping and happiness means that they are not always reliably observed by
others. Specifically related to this point is the measure used for coping, in which
students were asked to identify a school-related concern and respond accordingly,
thus rendering an idiosyncratic stimulus. Although previous research notes a con-
sistent response “regardless of the nature of the concern” (Frydenberg 2008, p. 49),
this may be seen as a limitation of the measure. Empirically, this was evident in the
low reliability estimates (alphas) for productive and unproductive coping. Further
caution regarding the measure is warranted given the use of item parcels: in such
cases as these, they can be considered acceptable (T. D. Little et al. 2002) but they
may upwardly bias the structural estimates (Marsh et  al. 2013). Future coation of
this measure should consider these limitations. Finally, our study was a quantitative
one, identifying the existence, direction, and strength of hypothesized relationships.
Qualitative data would shed light on the precise ways these factors and processes
play out in students’ daily academic lives.

5 Conclusion

By examining personality, coping, and school well-being within one encompassing

model, the current study has extended previous research findings relevant to the role
of coping in students’ academic development. In the current study, students’ coping
strategies predicted subsequent school well-being, while personality in some cases
evinced significant direct effects on students’ school-related well-being. These find-
ings have implications for promoting a more positive experience of school—and
potentially outcomes beyond school.

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Paul Evans  Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology at the School of Education at the
University of New South Wales. His research interests  include motivation, engagement, and cognitive
psychology.

Andrew J. Martin  Ph.D., is Scientia Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology in the School
of Education at the University of New South Wales. He specializes in student motivation, engagement,
learning, and achievement.

Zorana Ivcevic  Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Ivcevic
studies the role of emotion and emotion skills in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts
(and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills.

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