Issues in Educational Research, 8(1), 1998, 33-48.

Coping with social issues: What Australian university students do

Erica Frydenberg
University of Melbourne
Glenn Rowley
Monash University

This paper investigates the extent of student concern about social issues and the strategies used by young adults to cope with their concerns. Students from three faculties at the University of Melbourne responded to a range of social issues by recording their coping actions on an 80-item instrument which identifies 18 coping strategies. The strategies were examined for differences among subgroups of respondents. Between-subject comparison groups were gender and faculty (Psychology, Medicine and Education). Within-subject comparisons were made on the proximity of concern (personal and global). While no significant main effects were found for gender, there were significant faculty differences with Psychology students indicating the highest level of use of the strategy in each case. Furthermore significant differences were found between strategies adopted in relation to personal and global concerns. As predicted, respondents used more problem-solving strategies in relation to personal concerns than global concerns. Only one interaction was statistically significant. For Ignore the Problem, the highest scores among males were recorded by Medical students, and among females by Education students. The findings have methodological significance in that they demonstrate that differences exist between bodies of students with different disciplinary foci, and accounting for such within-group variability increases the statistical power of determining coping behaviours in particular contexts.

Studies that have focused in particular on the concerns of tertiary students have found young people to be liberal in their social attitudes yet overall mainly concerned with careers and financial well being (Anderson & Bryjack, 1989; Green & Astin, 1985; McClure & Russo, 1986). Studies of university student populations have often found within group differences which have been based on gender. For example, a study by McClure and Russo (1986) of American college students found university students demonstrated low interest in social issues and further found that men were more concerned with issues affecting their personal identity and the achievement of their goals than women. Given differences with the student population, it is reasonable to expect that differences exist in students' concerns relating to social issues and how they cope with these concerns.

Frydenberg and Lewis (1996a) found that adolescents in general were significantly concerned about global social issues but, in real terms, these do not take precedence over the more general concerns regarding work, employment, or family relationships. In that investigation, when young people were forced to nominate their major concern or to choose from a list of possibilities, social concerns were rarely identified. The fact that issues which impact more directly on the lives of adolescents are of greatest concern to them is not surprising given their relative immediacy. Nevertheless, when the level of adolescents' concern about social issues is assessed in absolute terms, and not in comparison to other things which worry them, it can be shown that, on average, they are as concerned about social issues such as third world poverty and nuclear threat as they are about many of the more personal issues such as maintaining good friendships, becoming happily married and gaining independence from parents (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1996a).

Concerns that individuals have about the future may be divided into two categories. There are those concerns that relate personally to the individual while there are also concerns that relate to events that are less immediate to the individual and are more social by nature. It may be possible for some concerns to fall into both categories. For example, discrimination can be of concern at both a personal or individual level while also being of concern at a more global or societal level. This distinction has been made by authors such as Poole (1990), McMurray and Prior (1985), and Prior (1985), who distinguished between private (personal) and public (societal) concerns. The focus in this study is on students' personal and global (societal) concerns.

One of the aims of the present study was to examine whether University students differed in their degree of concern about personal and global issues. The question of whether students are more concerned about personal or global issues was raised by McClure and Russo (1986) who described individuals as either focussed on 'personal ascendancy' (an interest in personal and material aspects of one's future), or 'community ascendancy' (characterised by a greater concern for the well-being of the community and others).

College students in the United States see professionals as an important group in solving future social problems (Aalto, Tirrel, & Klentz, 1992). Therefore, students who are training in areas aimed at professional employment (such as Medicine and Psychology) may be expected to have an interest in more global or societal problems facing the community. Part of tertiary education's role in our community is to provide education and training for our prospective social leaders. A necessary part of this education and training is the stimulation of an awareness of general social issues. Thus, given that university is an environment which promotes social awareness through extended education, it may be expected that university students would be quite concerned about global issues. The university students in the present study were required to rate both global and personal concerns separately and it is expected that global concerns will be rated as high as (if not higher than) personal concerns.

A second interest in this study was whether students with particular disciplinary foci would show differences in their degree of concern for both personal and global issues. Students from three faculties were used in the present study: Medicine, Psychology, and Education. These disciplines represent individuals interested in careers with a service focus. Since faculties which train young adults in helping professions seemingly have some responsibility for making students aware of broader social issues that affect members of the community, it may be assumed that these students might be more concerned than students from other disciplines about social concerns. The present study examined differences between students' concerns with global issues relative to personal concerns, and as a function of faculty of enrolment.

This study aims not only to establish what level of concern university students have in relation to personal and global issues, but also to examine how students cope with these concerns. Coping is essentially a dynamic phenomenon which is defined as a set of cognitive and affective actions which arise in response to a particular concern. Coping responses represent attempts made by the individual to restore the equilibrium or remove the turbulence for the individual. This may be done by solving the problem (that is, removing the stimulus) or accommodating to the concern without bringing about a solution (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a).

Lazarus and Folkman (1985) have identified two major approaches to coping, problem-focussed and emotion-focussed coping. Problem-focussed coping is defined as "doing something to change for the better the problem causing the distress", while emotion-focussed coping is defined as coping that is involved with "the regulation of distressing emotions" (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985, p.152). The former is utilised more when the problem is perceived as changeable and the latter is utilised more when the problem is perceived as less changeable. Thus it was expected that where problems are more personal and one, would assume, more changeable, problem-focussed strategies would be used, and where problems are more global and subsequently under less direct control of the individual, more emotion-focussed strategies would be called upon.

The current study used the Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS, Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a) to assess the coping responses of students. The ACS contains 80 items which may be grouped into either 18 coping strategies or 3 coping styles. In particular, two of the coping styles concur with Folkman and Lazarus' (1985) conception of problem- and emotion-focussed coping. The coping style "Solve the Problem" seems to reflect Folkman and Lazarus' definition of problem-focussed coping. Similarly the coping style labelled "Reference to Others" reflects emotion-focussed coping. Given this is the case, it is expected that, for personal concerns (where the issue is more changeable), students would be more likely to use the coping style "Solve the Problem", and for global concerns (where the issue is less changeable), students would be more likely to use the coping style "Reference to Others". The third coping style, labelled "Non-productive coping," includes avoidance strategies and a general failure to cope.

Previous research on coping has revealed clear cut differences in the way males and females cope. The most common finding relates to social support, a strategy females use more than males (especially during adolescence) (Belle, 1991; Ebata & Moos, 1994; Frydenberg & Lewis, 1991a, 1993b; Spirito, Overholser, & Stark, 1989; Stark, Spirito, Williams, & Guevremont, 1989). Adolescent females also exhibit higher overall worry, which is characterised by concerns about the future in general, than males (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1996a; Hamilton, van Moverik, Outting, Bouvais, & Keilin, 1988). Thus the present research examined gender differences in the coping behaviour of students to see if such findings would be replicated.

In summary, the study reported here draws a distinction between those social issues which have a direct effect on the individual's future life (personal) and those which are more removed in the way they impact on a person's life (global). It examines students' concerns about both these types of issues and also assesses how they cope with these concerns. It was expected that students would employ more of the coping style "Solving the Problem" in dealing with personal concerns, and employ more of the style "Reference to Others" for global concerns. Furthermore, the study aimed to see whether ratings of concern and coping strategies differ as a function of faculty as well as gender.

Method

Participants

The sample for this investigation included students drawn from the three disciplinary areas of Psychology (n = 42), Medicine (n = 48), and Education (n = 68). One hundred and fifty eight students fully completed the questionnaires. Two-thirds of the participants were females, their ages ranging from 16 to 37 years, with the majority (78.4 percent) falling within the range 18 to 23 years. The Medicine and Psychology students were third-year undergraduate students while the Education students were enrolled in a fourth-year Graduate Diploma of Education. In the Australian context, university students are selected on merit and there is strong competition not only to get a place at the university but to get into a particular course or faculty. In the hierarchy of competition for places, Medicine is ranked first, followed by Psychology. The situation in Education is somewhat different from that of the other students surveyed in that all students enrolled in the teacher training program have completed a first degree in another discipline.

Instruments

Issues of concern:
A list of social issues was compiled through talking to students and from the literature on social issues and concerns (Cairns & Hatt, 1995; Frydenberg & Lewis, 1996a, 1996b; Krause, 1993; Klodawsky & Lundy, 1995). In order to provide support for the conceptualisation of concerns as 'personal' or 'global', a sample of students was asked to describe, in terms of the nature of the concern, what discriminated between the two lists of concerns (where one list was of personal concerns and the other list global concerns). The responses for each group were sufficiently homogeneous to justify the categorisation of personal safety, discrimination against an individual, pollution affecting the individual, unemployment, and war as personal concerns, whilst general environmental concerns, discrimination in more general terms, global war, poverty in general, and human rights, were regarded as global concerns. For each of these concerns, respondents indicated their present level of concern on a four point scale, ranging from 1 (unconcerned) to 4 (very concerned) at a personal and global level.

Coping strategies:
The Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS) (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a) was used to examine the coping responses of participants. The questionnaire consists of 80 items which form 18 coping strategies. Except for the last item, which asks student to write down any additional things they do to cope other than those things described in the preceding 79 items, each item describes a specific coping behaviour. Responses to the 79 coping behaviours are scored on a five point scale ranging from 'used a great deal', to 'doesn't apply or don't do it'.

The eighteen coping strategies can be meaningfully grouped into three styles of coping (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1991b). Strategies which represent attempts to remain positive while solving the problem (Focus on the Positive, Focus on Solving the Problem, Physical Recreation, Seek Relaxing Diversions and Working Hard to Achieve) form the coping style labelled Solving the Problem. The second style, Reference to Others, is made up of the strategies Seeking Social Support, Investing in Close Friends (a strategy which involves engaging in an intimate relationship), Seeking to Belong (which denotes a concern with others), Seeking Spiritual Support, Seeking Professional Help and recourse to Social Action. This style relates to interacting with other people and remaining socially connected. The third group of strategies appears less productive in reaching a solution and has an emotional focus. The strategies in this coping style include Worry (in particular about the individual's personal future), Wishful Thinking, Ignoring the Problem, the use of Tension Reduction strategies such as smoking, eating or drinking, Keeping of problems to Oneself, Self-Blame and Not Cope, which is a declaration of an inability to cope. These three coping styles have been found to be replicable by factor analysis, and have moderate but not high internal consistencies (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a).

The stages of the development of the ACS and its statistical properties have been reported elsewhere (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1990, 1991b, 1993a). The eighteen scales for the specific form of the ACS are reliable with alphas ranging from .62 to .87 with a median figure of .74. The stability of responses, as measured by test-retest reliability coefficients, range from .49 to .82, and are in general moderate, but nevertheless satisfactory given the dynamic nature of coping indicated in our earlier definition of this construct (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a).

Procedure

Two forms of the ACS, together with lists of personal and global concerns relating to social issues, were given to all students during course lectures which applied psychological principles of human adaptation. The questionnaires were distributed to the Medical students and to the Diploma of Education students at the end of a lecture relating to stress and coping , and to the Psychology students as one of a battery of self-assessment instruments.

The respondents initially rated their present level of concern for each of five personal and five global social issues listed. They then indicated their main concern in each category. Having nominated their main personal concern, they completed the 80-item ACS in relation to that concern. They then completed the ACS a second time in relation to their nominated global concern. Thus all students completed the ACS twice, first with regard to personal concerns, and secondly in relationship to global concerns. All questionnaires were completed during one session.

Results

Issues of concern

Of the five personal issues nominated, four of the issues were of substantive concern to a substantial proportion of students. Only the issue of War was not "somewhat" or "very" concerning to the majority of respondents (38% of responses fell into these two categories for War). In contrast, Personal Safety and Pollution Affecting the Individual were rated as "somewhat" or "very" concerning by over 70 % of respondents, and very few respondents were "unconcerned" about Personal Safety (5%) and Pollution Affecting the Individual (3%). Global issues were generally rated as more concerning than personal issues. Very few issues were rated as "unconcerning". More than 70 percent of respondents were either "somewhat" or "very" concerned about global concerns except for Global War (with 59.7% of respondents being "somewhat" or "very" concerned about this issue).

Chi-square analyses were performed to determine whether there were any faculty differences in ratings of level of concerns for both global and personal concerns. For personal concerns, only one significant inter-faculty difference was found. Medical students were less concerned, and Education students more concerned, about Unemployment (c2(6) = 25.5, p < .001); a result that reflects the employment prospects in these two professions at the time of their response. With respect to global concerns, two chi-squared tests showed significant results. For the issues of Global War (c2(6) = 18.3, p < .01) and Discrimination (c2(6) = 13.49; p <.05), Psychology students were most concerned, Medical students least concerned, while the scores of Education students fell between the two.

Coping strategies

The means and standard deviations of the extent to which respondents used each of the 18 coping strategies for personal and global concerns are shown in Table 1, ranked in order from highest usage to lowest, for personal and global concerns, separately.

Table 1: Coping with social concerns Mean rankings of use of eighteen
coping strategies of the ACS for personal and global concerns (N=158)

Personal
Global
CopingMeanSD
CopingMeanSD
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.		 Solve the Problem
Work hard
Social Support
Relaxation
Focus on Positive
Worry
Wishful Thinking
Seek to Belong
Physical Recreation
Invest in Friends
Self-blame
Keep to Self
Professional help
Ignore the problem
Tension Reduction
Social Action
Spiritual Support
Not Cope		 3.45
3.27
3.26
2.98
2.98
2.93
2.56
2.53
2.51
2.48
2.45
2.37
2.03
2.01
1.99
1.95
1.92
1.76		 0.76
1.01
0.86
0.85
0.76
0.87
0.78
0.82
1.07
0.91
0.95
0.88
0.94
0.71
0.68
0.79
1.17
0.58		 |
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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|
|
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|		 1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.		 Solve the Problem
Social Support
Work Hard
Relaxation
Focus on Positive
Worry
Wishful Thinking
Seek to Belong
Physical Recreation
Invest in Friends
Keep to Self
Ignore the problem
Self-blame
Social Action
Professional Help
Spiritual support
Tension Reduction
Not cope		 3.35
3.05
2.96
2.87
2.87
2.85
2.61
2.36
2.34
2.31
2.29
2.09
2.24
2.08
1.98
1.94
1.89
1.77		 0.82
0.93
1.07
0.95
0.78
0.81
0.86
0.82
1.10
0.90
0.88
0.78
0.95
0.88
0.86
1.20
0.70
0.59

Means of coping that address the issue quite directly (Solve the Problem, Work Harder, Focus on the Positive) were ranked highly, as were some that addressed aspects of personal adequacy and support (Social Support, Relaxation, Worry). The least favoured strategies were outside interventions (Professional Help, Spiritual Support), and negative responses (Tension-reduction, Not Coping). The rank ordering of strategies was remarkably similar for personal and global concerns, with the first ten rankings being virtually identical. Among the less-favoured strategies, some differences did occur. Social Action and Ignoring the Problem were ranked higher for global concerns, while Self-blame, Tension-reduction, and Seek Professional Help were ranked higher for personal concerns.

Repeated-measures analyses of variance were conducted for each of the 18 coping strategies with gender and faculty as the between-subjects factors, and proximity (i.e. global versus personal) as the within-subjects factor. The results are summarised in Table 2

Table 2: Univariate F-values for tests of difference in coping strategies
by gender, faculty and proximity of concern (N=158)


Between-Groups Factors Tests Involving Within-subjects Factors

Variable Gender Faculty Gender by Faculty Proximity Gender by Proximity Faculty by Proximity Gender by Faculty by Proximity
Social Support
Solve Problem
Physical Recreation
Spiritual Support
Professional help
Worry
Relaxation
Invest in Friends
Social Action
Seek to Belong
Work Hard
Focus on Positive
Wishful Thinking
Not Cope
Ignore the problem
Tension Reduction
Keep to Self
Self-blame		 3.39
0.87
2.18
1.64
0.01
0.54
1.38
0.87
0.00
0.05
0.25
0.53
0.75
0.35
1.44
0.65
1.48
0.01		 5.66
2.77
3.58
0.20
6.85
2.40
0.36
4.04
5.56
1.63
1.19
0.94
2.03
3.00
1.02
4.24
1.74
1.04		 1.10
1.06
1.28
0.08
0.30
0.99
0.06
0.77
0.78
0.46
1.79
0.59
2.31
0.04
3.36
0.11
0.87
0.25		 7.86
1.41
6.61
0.34
2.09
0.77
1.80
7.03
3.78
8.93
15.15
3.41
0.42
0.05
2.01
2.70
1.96
10.22		 0.21
0.12
1.10
0.15
1.48
0.00
0.65
1.55
0.52
0.00
0.01
0.06
3.00
1.50
0.94
0.00
1.54
0.18		 0.02
1.93
0.24
1.19
0.41
1.36
0.28
0.44
0.28
0.41
0.36
0.25
1.58
0.40
2.10
0.19
1.22
0.38		 0.02
1.32
0.33
1.76
1.84
2.04
0.27
1.21
0.49
0.02
0.29
0.36
0.36
0.24
1.08
0.72
0.50
0.99
Note: Values in bold are statistically significant at p < .05

As Table 2 demonstrates, no significant main effects were detected for gender for any of the 18 coping strategies. Significant main effects were found for proximity and faculty. For proximity, significant differences were found between strategies adopted in relation to personal and global concerns for Social Support, Physical Recreation, Invest in Friends, Seek to Belong, Work Hard and Self-blame. For faculty, significant differences were found for the strategies of Seek Social Support, Physical Recreation, Professional Help, Invest in Close Friends, Social Action, and Tension-reduction. Table 3 shows that, in each case, Psychology students had the highest mean score indicating the highest level of use of the strategy.

Table 3: Mean scores for coping strategies by faculty and proximity of concern (N=158)



FACULTY
 Significant
Differences
(p < .05)
Variable
Psychology
(N = 42)		 Medicine
(N = 48)		 Education
(N= 68)
Social Support (Personal)
(Global)		 3.64
3.41		 3.09
2.93		 3.11
2.94		 Faculty
Proximity
Solve Problem (Personal)
(Global)		 3.73
3.56		 3.22
3.28		 3.37
3.24
Physical Recreation (Personal)
(Global)		 2.78
2.58		 2.32
2.26		 2.34
2.21		 Faculty
Proximity
Spiritual support (Personal)
(Global)		 1.80
1.83		 1.94
2.01		 1.85
1.79
Professional Help (Personal)
(Global)		 2.47
2.29		 1.69
1.67		 1.90
1.94		 Faculty
Worry (Personal)
(Global)		 3.01
2.94		 2.67
2.75		 3.06
2.91
Relaxation (Personal)
(Global)		 3.02
2.92		 3.05
3.01		 2.94
2.79
Invest in Friends (Personal)
(Global)		 2.84
2.66		 2.42
2.28		 2.24
2.19		 Faculty
Proximity
Social Action (Personal)
(Global)		 2.31
2.34		 1.88
1.98		 1.79
1.98		 Faculty
Seek to Belong (Personal)
(Global)		 2.67
2.51		 2.39
2.28		 2.56
2.36		 Proximity
Work Hard (Personal)
(Global)		 3.41
3.10		 3.01
2.93		 3.23
2.93		 Proximity
Focus on Positive (Personal)
(Global)		 3.07
2.94		 2.81
2.84		 2.88
2.75
Wishful Thinking (Personal)
(Global)		 2.57
2.76		 2.59
2.65		 2.57
2.48
Not Cope (Personal)
(Global)		 1.72
1.76		 1.61
1.64		 1.92
1.87
Ignore the Problem (Personal)
(Global)		 1.77
2.04		 2.11
2.13		 2.16
2.13
Tension Reduction (Personal)
(Global)		 2.18
2.05		 1.76
1.70		 2.06
1.94		 Faculty
Keep to Self (Personal)
(Global)		 2.21
2.25		 2.26
2.19		 2.54
2.42
Self-blame (Personal)
(Global)		 2.29
2.17		 2.44
2.17		 2.61
2.39		 Proximity
Note: Values in bold are statistically significant at p < .05

Only one interaction effect was statistically significant. For Ignore the Problem, the highest scores among males were recorded by Medical students, and among females by Education students.

Coping styles

The three coping styles, which are made up of various coping strategies, have been labelled Solving the Problem (directly addressing the concern while remaining optimistic, fit, relaxed and socially connected), Reference to Others (seeking assistance and support from others, whether peers, professionals or deities, in a bid to deal with a concern), and Non-productive coping (avoidance strategies that are directly associated with an inability to cope).

Repeated-measures analyses of variance were used to assess whether there were significant differences associated with gender, proximity (personal or global concerns), and faculty for each of the three coping styles. The results are summarised in Table 4. The only significant faculty difference occurred for Reference to Others, a coping style that was significantly favoured more by Psychology (M = 2.52) students compared to Education (M = 2.15) or Medical (M = 2.22) students. Solving the Problem and Non-productive coping styles occurred significantly more in relation to personal (M = 2.25 and M = 2.67) than to global (M = 2.15 and M = 2.60) concerns. Of interest is the fact that students used Reference to Others to the same extent for personal as for global concerns. No significant differences for gender were found.

Table 4: Univariate F-values for tests of difference in coping styles
according to gender, faculty and proximity of concern (N=158)


Between-Groups Factors Tests Involving Within-subjects Factors

Variable Gender Faculty Gender by Faculty Proximity Gender by Proximity Faculty by Proximity Gender by Faculty by Proximity
Solving the Problem
Ref. to Others
Non-productive coping		 0.26
1.23
0.59		 2.68
4.60
1.44		 0.54
0.53
0.77		 8.42
0.95
4.17		 0.06
0.48
1.01		 1.04
0.13
0.75		 0.37
1.63
0.10
Note: Values in bold are statistically significant at p < .05

Discussion

University students indicated that they were highly concerned about both personal and global issues. There was a high level of concern amongst students about Personal Safety, a finding consistent with that of Klodawsky and Lundy (1994) in their study of expressed fears and personal safety of an American university sample. This finding is not surprising in the Australian context. According to the index of major crimes against the person there has been a steady increase since the early 1970's. For example in the years 1980 to 1988/89 the rates of major crimes against the person grew from 88 crimes per 100,000 people to around 164 per 100,000. This was equivalent to an average annual rate of increase of about 8%. In the years since 1989 the growth in major person crimes has slowed, averaging around 2% per year. However, the rate of serious assaults has nearly doubled since 1983, from 55 per 100,000 to nearly 100 per 100,000 in 1992/93. (BCSR, 1995). In addition, in a recent nationwide survey of 2250 Australian women the threat of violence was reported as women's biggest worry (The Age, 1994).

Discrimination and Environmental issues were rated as highly concerning at both the personal and global level. Discrimination and sexual harassment are reported as experienced at a personal level by a substantial number of students (Cairns & Hatt, 1995). Furthermore, Australia is a multicultural society where legislation against racial and sexual discrimination has been well publicised and, as a result, there is a high level of awareness about these issues. Similarly, environmental issues have received widespread media attention in the last five to ten years, and environmental consciousness has been found to be high in other student populations (Krause, 1993). The fact that Education students were most concerned about unemployment is a realistic indication of the likelihood that 30% of post graduate teacher trainees in recent years were destined for employment in education in Victoria (Anderson, Scutella, Harding & Liew, 1998).

Global issues were as much, if not a greater concern, to these students than personal issues. While this may be a function of participants reporting on their personal and global concerns independently, it may also be a function of the university culture where an awareness of social issues may be encouraged and promoted to a greater degree. Equally these findings may be particular to the disciplines from which students were drawn. Psychology, Medicine and Education are disciplines which may be labelled 'helping professions', and all have a social service perspective which may encourage students to be more aware of and concerned about global or societal issues. Nevertheless, it seems that the students in the current study were not solely concerned about the personal and material aspects of their future, but also had a well-defined awareness of (and concern for) social and community issues.

The rankings of the first ten coping strategies for personal and global concerns were very similar. However, it is interesting to note that for the first ten coping strategies the levels of strategy use were uniformly higher for personal concerns than for global concerns indicating that participants were reporting using coping strategies more frequently to deal with personal concerns. The exception to this was Wishful Thinking which individuals reported that they used more for global concerns. This trend is reflected in the significant main effects for proximity. All six strategies that showed significant differences between personal and global concerns revealed that these strategies were being used to a greater degree for personal concerns. This suggests, not altogether surprisingly, that individuals feel more able to activate a coping response for their more immediate personal concerns than for global concerns despite being as concerned, if not more concerned, about global issues.

When strategies were combined into coping styles, the finding that Solving the Problem was used more in relation to personal than global concerns was consistent with predictions based on Folkman and Lazarus' (1985) dichotomy of problem- and emotion-focussed coping. Respondents may feel that personal concerns are more changeable and therefore use more problem-focussed strategies. However, contrary to prediction, subjects did not report using more Reference to Others when dealing with global concerns. Additionally, non-productive coping styles were used more with personal concerns than global concerns. While this may not be unusual in that it may be reasonable to expect participants to use strategies such as Worry and Tension Reduction to deal with their more immediate concerns, the present findings only partially supported our initial hypotheses.

The reason for these findings may be extrapolated from previous work of Frydenberg and Lewis (1996a). These authors found that adolescents were more likely to rate personal issues as more concerning than global issues which, they argued, is not surprising given the immediacy of personal concerns. A similar explanation may be applied to the current findings regarding students' coping responses. Just as it is not surprising that adolescents rated personal issues as more concerning to them than global ones, individuals may invest more time and energy into coping with their personal concerns as opposed to their global concerns, simply because they are more immediate to them. While the degree of concern may be similar for personal and global issues, coping responses may vary as a function of proximity of concern because coping behaviours are employed with greater frequency for personal, and hence more immediate, concerns. This question warrants further investigation with closer attention paid to the categories of problem- and emotion-focussed coping.

Of interest is the fact that there were no gender differences for either the coping strategies or coping styles. This is surprising given previous research on coping which has shown marked differences between males and females (Belle, 1991; Ebata & Moos, 1994; Frydenberg & Lewis, 1991a, 1993a, 1996a; Hamilton et al., 1988; Stark et al., 1989; Spirito et al., 1989). This finding is difficult to explain. Possibly gender may not be a discriminating factor when individuals are articulating the coping responses they employ when dealing with social issues. On the other hand, the participants in this study may be atypical, in that they are representative of social science students rather than the full range of university students.

The comparisons by faculty with regard to coping strategies used should not be generalised too widely. The selection of respondents was not random, and we could not claim that the samples obtained were fully representative of students within those faculties. The findings do have methodological significance, however. They demonstrate that differences exist between bodies of students with different disciplinary foci, and they issue a warning that studies that do not take these differences into account may risk substantial loss of precision. In this study, for example, to have made gender comparisons without taking account of the students' faculty of enrolment would have been statistically weak. The reason for this is that the substantial differences that we now know exist among faculties would have been included in the variances within each gender, and would have detracted substantially from the statistical power of the study. Even if inter-disciplinary differences had been of no research interest, it would have been advantageous to have included the faculty variable so that gender comparisons could be made with more statistical power. Disciplinary focus (and possibly other sociocultural variables) can play an important role by providing statistical control, even when they are not major foci of the research study.

The present study investigated a number of variables which may contribute to our understanding of students' concerns with the social and personal issues confronting them in their lives, and how they cope with such concerns. It remains of interest to determine whether different groups of university students are concerned about what McClure & Russo (1986) have described as 'personal ascendancy', the interest in personal and material aspects of their future, or whether some groups are more focused on 'community ascendancy', concern for the well being of the community and others. While in this study there is generally more concern for global issues (community ascendency) the fact that these are social science students might account for this. Raising awareness and discussion about these issues with the main players is likely to benefit all concerned.

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Please cite as: Frydenberg, E. & Rowley, G. (1998). Coping with social issues: What Australian university students do. Issues in Educational Research, 8(1), 33-48.
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