Life Stress and Coping Strategies of Hearing - Impaired Students

Kim, Jin Woo; Kim, Young Wook

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2002;7(1): 181-202.

Jin Woo Kim^` , and Young Wook Kim^`

김진우(Jin Woo Kim)| 김영욱(Young Wook Kim)

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the life stresses and the coping strategies of hearing- impaired student s. A questionnaire concerning the life stresses and the coping strategies was administered to 104 hearing- impaired middle and high school student s. It was found that the hearing- impaired student s experience the life stresses which are related to the ongoing tasks and situations (e.g., school work, recreation and leisure activities, health and body development, and the imminent life problems) more often than the interpersonal problems (e.g., family relations, the friend relationships of both the same and different sex, teacher - student relationships). The analysis of variance was applied to the scores of life stresses and coping strategies according to the level of attended school, sex, and grade. The results showed that high school student s experienced the stresses of health and body development, and general life problems more often than middle school student s. In the case of middle school students, female student s experienced the stresses with ongoing tasks, the friend relations of the same sex, health and body development problems more often than male students. In the case of stress coping strategies, the hearing- impaired students used positive strategies (e.g. active problem solving, self-motivated pursuit of social support , and positive comparisons) rather than negative strategies (external feeling emission, internal feeling inhibition, internal feeling emission, distance strategy). High school student s used more diverse coping strategies than middle school students.