Stress mindset, coping strategies, and well-being of secondary students in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The present study explored the association between stress mindset and well-being of students during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic. The study also sought to examine how the relationship between students’ stress-mindset and well-being can be mediated by students’ coping strategies. The study applied a cross-sectional survey design, with secondary students (N = 617) from Singapore as participants. The results of parallel mediation analyses suggest that students who endorse a stress-is-enhancing mindset also tend to apply engagement coping strategies and that the use of such coping strategies serve as a potential mediator of the relationship between the students’ stress-is-enhancing mindset and well-being. The stress-is-debilitating mindset was found to have a positive relationship with depressive symptoms; this relationship was not significantly mediated by coping. The findings suggest that endorsing a stress-is-enhancing mindset, along with the use of engagement coping, may serve as a protective factor to promote adolescents’ well-being when experiencing high stress.

Keywords:

• Well-being
• stress mindset
• coping strategies
• pandemic
• Singapore
• adolescents

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Singapore Ministry of Education under the Educational Research Funding Programme (OER 15/19 ISC) and administered by the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University.