Abstract
Objective: This study served to clarify the effect of coping on physical and mental health in Lazarus's stress theory.
Methods: The participants were faculty of medicine and health sciences students. The 1, 330 participants completed the Way of Coping Check List Scale (WCCL) and the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form (MOS SF-36) self-administered questionnaire. The numeric data was analyzed using JMP IN Ver. 5 to calculate frequencies. Compensation was made by reducing the alpha significance level for statistical analyses from 0.05.
Results: The analysis was based on the results of 1, 164 participants who completed the survey. The physical component summary (PCS) and the mental component summary (MCS) were an object variable. The problem-focused coping (Pr) and emotion-focused coping (Em) were an explanatory variable. In addition a multiple regression analysis was conducted. As a result of having examined the significance of the standardized partial regression coefficient, the relation between the influence on as opposed to PCS and MCS in Pr and Em, the Em (p<0.0001) significantly affected the PCS, and resulted in a negative relation. Both the Pr (p<0.0001) and Em (p<0.0001) had a significant effect on the MCS. In particular, the Pr affected a positive relation and the Em affected a negative relation.
Conclusion: The results suggest that the Pr does not influence PCS, but it promotes MCS. In addition, the Em lowers both of the PCS and MCS.
