Adolescent appraisals and coping strategies during a stressful exam.

One hundred male and female, grade 8, 9, and 10 students, aged 13 to 16, participated in a study to investigate how adolescents appraise and cope during a stressful mathematics exam. Prior to the exam, questionnaires assessing tension, appraisals o f control and self-efficacy, and perceptions o f state anxiety were administered to the students. Following the exam, a coping questionnaire and a demographic questionnaire was administered, and the state-anxiety inventory was readministered. Test grades from the exam were collected from the teachers. The data were analyzed by Pearson product moment correlations, an independent measures t-test, an analysis o f variance, and by a multiple regression analysis. The results indicated that tliere were no significant relationships between control and total problem-focused coping or between control and total emotion-focused coping. However, the relationships between control and the subscales o f problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies were significant. As expected, there were significant relationships between self-efficacy and control and between self-efficacy and total problem-focused coping strategies. Further analysis indicated that s e lf efficacy was positively related to math grade point average and test score. Stepwise multiple regression demonstrated that s e lf efficacy predicted problem-focused coping and test score more than any other variable. The results were discussed in relation to Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) theory o f stress and coping.