Gender Differences in Adolescent Athletes’ Coping with Interpersonal Stressors in Sport: More Similarities than Differences?

Abstract

This study examined gender differences in the types of coping strategies adolescent athletes use to manage sport-related interpersonal stress. To explain gender coping differences, the dispositional and situational gender coping hypotheses were explored (Tamres, Janicki, & Helgenson, 2002). Adolescent athletes from Western Canada (N = 524) completed measures of stress appraisal and coping-strategy use in response to a self-selected interpersonal stress source in sport. Results revealed gender differences, but only in select coping strategies. Gendered-coping was not robust across interpersonal sources of stress, providing partial support for the situational gender coping hypothesis. The results are discussed in relation to stress processes that mediate gendered coping as well as the implications for practitioner assistance in youth athletes’ stress-management.

We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the work presented in this manuscript. Also, we wish to acknowledge and thank Robin Farrell, Cathy Sabiston, Meghan McDonough for their contributions in collecting and synthesizing the data. Finally, we would like to thank the athletes, parents, and coaches for their participation in this research. This research was supported by a grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to the second author.

Notes

∗. Significant differences as judged from adjusted Bonferroni Alpha values.

∗. Significant differences as judged from adjusted Bonferroni Alpha values.

∗. p < .05

1. The remaining 13% of sample identified either having “no ethic origin” or a “multicultural” ethic origin, such as Canadian or American.

2. Readers may obtain a table containing further information describing the categorization, rule of inclusion, and examples of raw data for interpersonal stress sources from the first author.

3. Table 3 reports on the number of coping-effort instances in whole numbers. Due to rounding of integers, the number of coping-effort instances reported for individuals’ interpersonal stress sources do not always add up to the number of reported coping-effort instances found in Table 2.