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Description
The college environment provides a host of stressful exposures as a result of students being immersed in a new academic and social environment. Certain coping strategies used to alleviate stress (e.g., avoidance) are related to an increase in negative behaviors and mental health problems, which can be exacerbated in college students. However, other coping strategies, such as social support and religion, have been shown to promote psychological health. African Americans/Blacks tend to underutilize mental health care services despite the greater likelihood of certain stressors such as racial discrimination compared to Caucasians/Whites. Furthermore, African American/Black college students are underrepresented in coping research. The goal of the study was to evaluate whether the relationship between social support and religious coping strategies and psychological health is different for African American/Black college students compared to Caucasian/White college students. It was hypothesized that African American/Black students would use more social support and religious coping strategies than Caucasians/Whites, and that race would moderate the relation between these coping strategies and both positive and negative affect. Data were collected from a sample of 170 undergraduate students (18.8% African American/Black, 81.2% Caucasian/White) who participated in a larger study on coping that utilized an internet-based daily diary design. Participants responded to questionnaires that assessed daily stressful events, use of coping strategies, positive affect, and negative affect over the course of five days. To account for variation at the individual level and repeated measures, analysis was conducted using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). Racial differences were found in the frequency of certain aspects of coping, specifically higher use among African American/Black students of seeking God’s help and talking to family about how they were feeling as compared to Caucasian/White students. No racial moderation of the coping-affect relations was found, however. Findings also suggested a lack of racial differences in cultural values. Further research should continue to explore the relation between coping mechanisms and different measures of psychological health, while considering the potential contributing effects of racial differences.
