Stress, coping and adjustment in New Zealand and Vietnamese students

Abstract

In recent years, coping strategy research has become one of the flourishing areas of study within psychology generally and in the United States particularly. American psychologists have identified numerous stressors that affect adolescents today. Increasingly coping strategy research involves longitudinal and cross-cultural approaches. These findings help researchers understand more clearly the relationships between stress and coping. Many studies show that culture plays an important role in an individual's choice of coping strategies. Americans and other members of individualistic cultures tend to emphasize self-control and personal responsibility in coping with problems. They seem to seek social support in stressful situations less than members of collectivistic cultures such as Asian countries (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Shweder & Bourne, 1984; Triandis, 1989). Members of collectivistic cultures tend to be more oriented toward their peer groups, family, or community and to seeking help with their problems (Triandis, 1995). The main goal of the present research was to evaluate the relationships among stress, coping, and depression within the context of Cohen and Wills's (1985) buffering model. Many researchers have surveyed the numerous ways in which children and adolescents deal with stressful events (Aldwin, 1994; Boekarerts, 1996; Jose, D'Anna, Cafasso, Bryant, Chiker, Gein, & Zhezmer, 1998). In recent years, many researchers have begun to be more interested in extending their work into cross-cultural contexts (e.g., Chandler & Maurer, 1996; Crystal & Stevenson, 1995; Jose, Cafasso & D'Anna, 1994; Feldman, Rosenthal, Mont-Reynaud, Leung & Lau, 1991), but we have not found any work that has specifically examined stress, coping, and depression in Vietnamese participants. There is very little work that has examined peoples of south-east Asia (e.g., Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) in any regard, which this study does, and further the present study is a cross-cultural comparison of a Western country (NZ) and a south-east Asian country (Vietnam) because we need to know more about the understudied people of Vietnam within the context of the most commonly studied culture, namely the Western culture. The current study examines how culture affects the ways in which young adults cope. Cross-national comparisons were made in self-reported stress intensity, choice of coping strategies, and resultant adjustment. Also, individualism and collectivism (I/C) were measured to see whether the Vietnamese culture would be higher on collectivism and lower on individualism than the New Zealand culture. Further, I/C was used to see whether it would moderate the stress to adjustment relationship. This type of research can identify commonalities and differences across cultures in stress, coping, and adjustment.