This study investigated the relationships among child-perceived social support, children's ego-resilience and their stress coping behaviors. The test subjects were 366 students in the 4th, 5th, and 6th year of five elementary schools which were locate...
This study investigated the relationships among child-perceived social support, children's ego-resilience and their stress coping behaviors. The test subjects were 366 students in the 4th, 5th, and 6th year of five elementary schools which were located in Daejeon City. The measurements of the child-perceived social support are the original measurement that Ji Won Park (1985) developed for adults, the measurement of youths that Hye Jeong Yoon(1993) revised and supplemented, and the measurement that Seung Mi Kim(1997) revised and supplemented to be easy for elementary and middle school students to understand, but this study revised and supplemented the measurement which Jin Ahn developed and tried to make an editorial change for the sake of the effectiveness of communication and transmission so that it can be easy to understand. This study used the measurement of ego-resilience that Eun Hee Park developed based on the studies of ego-resilience that O'Connell-Higgins(1983) and Block & Kreman(1996) developed and that Hyeon Ok Kim(2010) rearranged through factor analysis by deleting questions which were low in reliability wherein questions of low reliability were revised and supplemented. This research revised and supplemented the measurement of stress coping behaviors that Jin Ah Park(2001) developed from the measurement of ordinary stress coping behaviors of children that Ha Young Min and Ahn Jin Yoo(1998) developed was used after revision and supplement.
The data were treated by t-test to know the difference in stress coping behaviors according to the upper and lower brackets of ego-resilience and the child-perceived social support and the difference in ego-resilience, and a stepwise regression analysis was used to know the in-depth relationships.
The results of this study are summarized as the following.
First, All sub-factors of social support improve fundamental․active problem solving which is a positive and effective coping of children among the stress coping behaviors and pursuit of support toward others. However, the only social support which reduces the aggressive emotional expression among stress coping behaviors is family-emotional support while materialistic support or family-information support has no effect on reducing aggressive emotional expression of children.
Second, All sub-factors of ego-resilience improve fundamental․active problem solving which is a positive and effective coping of children among the stress coping behaviors and pursuit of support toward others, and the aggressive emotional expression increases if ego-resilience gets lower. However, the curiosity requires wise protection and restriction as something which possesses positive and negative characteristics at the same time.
Third, All sub-factors of social support raise the ego-resilience of children while especially effecting in a positive way to vitality, friendliness and optimism. Seen from the characteristics of general relationship of social support and ego-resilience, although the emotional support and information support raise ego-resilience on the whole, all three support sources have important effect in the combined scene of support source and support type.
Fourth, In all sub-factors of social support, the thing which has the greatest influence on ego-resilience and stress coping behaviors of children is the emotional support of family.
Fifth, Considering from the explanation ability(R2=.350) of social support toward ego-resilience, explanation ability(R2=.272) of ego-resilience toward stress coping behaviors and explanation ability(R2=.114) of social support toward stress coping behaviors, it can be inferred that the social support perceived by children raises the ego-resilience of children to promote healthy and effective stress coping behaviors.