Comparison between High School Students in Cognitive and Affective Coping Strategies

Purpose: The purpose of this study was surveying of cognitive and affective strategies to cope with stress among high schoolv students, and comparison between boys and girls. This study was conducted to find the most important coping strategies among high school students. Method: The main instrument was Lazarus and Folkman (1984) stress coping strategies inventory, 203 students were randomly selected by clustering sampling.Results: The results of factor analysis showed that this inventory had two dimensions: cognitive and affective strategies. The results of t-test indicated that boys used accepting responsibility as a strategy significantly more than girls (t=2.642, p< .009). Also, they had higher scores in cognitive dimension than girls (t=2.308, p<.022).Conclusion: Findings of this study suggest that cognitive strategies have important role to cope whit stress.