A Study On The Characteristics Of Coping Style Of The Armored Car Crew

The cognitive theory of stress suggests that coping, an important mediated variable, plays an important role between stressors and stress responses and influences the character and intensity of stress responses and regulates the relationship between stress and mental health. As one of special groups in PLA , the armored car crew encounter lots of stressors unavoidable in biological, psychological, social, and individual aspects and their mental health level is lower than others'. It is very crucial to study the coping style of the armored car crew, and it will contributes to instructing them to cope with all kinds of stressors and improving mental health theoretically and practically. To research the characteristics of coping style of the armored car crew, Symptom Checklist-90, Coping Style Questionnaire, Social Support Scale, Self-esteem Scale and Internal-external Locus of Control Scale were used to investigate the armored car crew. Correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and path analysis were applied to analyze the data in SPSS9.0. The paper includes three studies: (1) the relationship between coping style and mental health, (2) the related factors of coping style, (3) exploring the effect path and interaction of the related factors. The main findings are as following: 1. The coping style of the armored car crew has the characteristics different from others': (1) mature coping styles are more than immature ones, (2) with age growing, problem-focused coping and seeking support tend to increase; fantasy, avoidance, rationalization tend to decrease, and fantasy, rationalization have significant difference between groups. (3) with educational level ascending, problem-focused coping and seeking support tend to increase; avoidant coping, self-blame, rationalization tend to decrease in general, and self-blame has significant difference between groups; there isn't obvious change in fantasy. (4) with military time increasing, problem-focused coping and seeking support tend to increase, and seeking support has significant difference; avoidant coping, self-blame, rationalization tend to fluctuate, and only reasonalization has significant difference; fantasy gradually decreases and has significant difference too. 2. Coping style of the armored car crew has close related to mental health, and is different between the crew with higher level of mental health and those with lower level of mental health.3. Many factors are related to coping style of the armored car crew, including individual factors, family factors, military factors and psycho-social factors. 4. The influencing factors of mature coping style are different from immature coping style and the effect paths are different, too. That is, the status of mental health and internal-external locus of control have direct functions on both mature coping style and immature coping style; social support and military factors have direct functions on mature coping style, but indirect functions on immature coping style; family factors and self-esteem have direct functions on immature coping style, but indirect functions on mature coping style. To sum up, to improve reasonable coping style of the armored car crew, the emphasis should be put on those with lower age, less education and lower military time. By virtue of the complexity of the influencing facors of coping style, we should attach importance to not only direct factors but also indirect factors. In practice, the findings of the study provide scientific basis for mental health education, training of psychological quality and psychological counseling.