Roads to positive self-development: styles of coping that predict well-being

Scientific literature has been registering an increasing interest in the field of well-being. Though the conceptual consensus is that coping is one of the factors responsible for well-being preservation through life span, few empirical researches address this issue using appropriate well-being measures. Thus, this work aimed essentially to explore the relations between well-being and coping, examining more specifically the influence of styles of coping in psychological well-being. In order to do so, we worked with a sample of 293 individuals with ages ranging from 18 to 84 years old, which completed three instruments: a Socio-Demographic Questionnaire (Maia de Carvalho & Vale Dias, 2010), the Portuguese version of Brief Cope (Carver, 1997) by Pais- Ribeiro and Rodrigues (2004) and the Portuguese version of the Psychological Well-Being Scales from Carol Ryff (1989b) by Ferreira and Simões (1999). It was found that particular styles of coping predict specific dimensions of psychological well-being and that socio-demographic factors explain a small proportion of the variance in well-being. The discussion addressed the results implications regarding the understanding of well-being development