The regulation of subjective well-being in cancer patients: An analysis of coping effectiveness |
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Authors: | Sigrun-Heide Filipp Thomas Klauer Elke Freudenberg Dieter Ferring |
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Affiliation: | University of Trier , Trier, Federal Republic of Germany |
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Abstract: | Abstract The hypothesis that individual coping efforts affect subjective well-being in the face of severe chronic disease is examined with questionnaire data from N=332 cancer patients in a one-year longitudinal study. After depicting conceptual and methodological requirements for the analysis of coping effectiveness, the following five coping modes were investigated in the sample: Rumination, search for affiliation, threat minimization, search for information and search for meaning in religion. Results from a series of hierarchical regression analyses yielded findings that questioned the underlying assumption of a general uniform causal direction within coping-adjustment relationships. Threat minimization proved to be the only coping mode that obviously was “effective” in well-being regulation, that is, was revealed to be predictive of well-being changes over time and to be unaffected by prior levels of well-being. It is argued that the problem of causal directionality has to be carefully examined in future studies on coping effectiveness since interindividual differences in coping behaviors might be a consequence rather than the cause of differences in adjustment status. |
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Keywords: | Coping with cancer coping effectiveness subjective well-being psychosocial oncology |
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