Coping, school adjustment and academic achievement in early adolescence

ABSTRACT

Objective

School activities are demanding for adolescents and activate strategies to manage them, promoting specific behaviours and outcomes in the academic environment. Drawing from the motivational theory of coping, coping included multiple adaptive strategies that are relevant to understand educational outcomes. This study is focused to examine the relation between adaptive coping, school adjustment and academic achievement in the adolescent.

Method

Participants were 1376 adolescents (mean age = 12.89; SD = 1.00; 51.38% girls) from Colombia, South America. They were surveyed using questionnaires and school grades were collected, in a cross-sectional design. The mediational model was tested using latent-variable structural equation modelling.

Results

Coping was significantly related to school adjustment, school adjustment was related to academic achievement, and the indirect effect of coping on academic achievement through school adjustment was significant. The direct effect of coping on academic achievement was not significant. Coping-adjustment-achievement path model is verified, without obtaining support for adjustment as an independent variable.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that students’ academic coping plays a role in better academic achievement by enhancing positive school adjustment.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Coping strategies can affect outcomes in adolescence.

2. School adjustment of early adolescents is relevant to academic life.

3. Academic achievement is affected by psychosocial factors in Latino adolescents.

What this topic adds:

1. Adaptive ways of coping may not be directly related to academic achievement.

2. School adjustment is related to academic achievement of Latino early adolescents.

3. The relation between coping and academic achievement is mediated by school adjustment.

KEYWORDS:

• Coping
• adolescence
• school adjustment
• academic achievement

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The database is available in the archives of the research team with the anonymity of the participants.

Ethical approval

The author declares that all procedures performed in this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guidelines to include human participants and with the original Helsinki Declaration and its amendments.

Additional information

Funding

This research received financial support from the CeiBA Foundation, in Bogotá, Colombia.