Coping Strategies and Stress Responses of Junior High School Students Preparing for High School Entrance Examinations: A Short-Term Longitudinal Study

The present study explored short-term longitudinal relations between several types of stress coping and psychological stress responses of junior high school students who were preparing for high school entrance examinations. Ninth graders (N＝268) completed a questionnaire once a month for 3 months. Analysis using a multivariate latent curve model revealed the following: (a) the intercept of stress responses negatively affected the slopes of both problem-solving coping and dependent emotion-focused coping, (b) the intercept of dependent emotion-focused coping negatively affected the slope of stress responses, and (c) the intercepts of both stress responses and avoid-ant coping were positively related, however no longitudinal relation between stress responses and avoidant coping was found.