Adolescents' Coping: Understanding the Role of Gender and Academic Competence

An attempt was made to examine the effect of gender and academic competence on coping processes of adolescents. The study adopted a 2 (academically competent adolescents versus academically less-competent adolescents) × 2 (boys versus girls) factorial design. In the present study, two hundred forty adolescents (120 academically competent adolescents securing 80% or more marks and 120 academically less-competent adolescents securing 50% or less mark) are randomly sampled from different urban colleges of Odisha. All the subjects were first year graduate students. The participants of all the four groups were compared with respect to their coping processes. The result indicated that academically competent adolescents adopted more problem- focused coping strategies and academically less-competent adolescents adopted more emotion-focused coping strategies. Again, boys used more problem-focused while girls used more emotion-focused coping strategies.Keywords: The Effect of gender and academic competence on coping process of adolescents