The self in change: A longitudinal investigation of coping and self-determination processes

Abstract

On the basis of theoretical work on self-determination, coping, and the self, this study aimed at understanding the role of both structural and flexible self variables in the process of adapting to change, and the consequences of this adaptation process. It was hypothesized that, in a changing situation, global self-determination, as a structural aspect of the self, would predict the coping strategies used to deal with this life change. Coping, in turn, was hypothesized to represent an adaptation process mediating the associations between global self-determination and various consequences. The consequences investigated included changes in psychological well-being and in flexible aspects of the self (i.e., new identity, contextual self-determined motivation). Using a three-wave design, this study tested these hypotheses among students experiencing the transition to university. Results obtained through structural equation modeling involving true change procedures provided support for most of the anticipated associations.

Acknowledgments

This research was facilitated thanks to doctoral fellowships attributed to the first author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds pour la formation des chercheurs et l'aide à la recherche (FCAR), as well as a grant from the Centre for University Teaching, University of Ottawa. This study presents a portion of the first author's PhD thesis.

We thank Roxane de la Sablonnière for her constructive feedback on a previous version of the manuscript and Jean Bégin for his statistical advice.

Notes

1. The SEM analyses reported here were also conducted after replacing the missing data with the expectation maximization procedure (EM) available in the EQS program. Overall, these analyses partly replicated the results reported herein. However, these supplementary analyses will not be reported given the amount of missing data replaced in these analyses and the need for future simulation studies to determine which percentage of missing data is appropriate to replace using the EM procedure.

2. Analyses were run with and without these outliers and yielded the same results.

3. Latent mean analyses in the context of SEM require that the factor loadings and intercepts be invariant across measurement waves. The factor loadings of identification, academic motivation, and well-being were all invariant. The intercepts of academic motivation and well-being were all invariant whereas only two out of three intercepts of identification were invariant. This partial invariance was deemed sufficient to provide an unbiased estimate of latent mean comparison across the two waves of measurement. The latent mean was fixed to zero at Time 1.

4. Results of these CFAs are available from the first author upon request.