Flexible coping responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome-related and daily life stressful events

Based on the theoretical framework of coping flexibility, the present study examined the coping flexibility of university students in response to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-related and daily life stressful events. The Coping Flexibility Questionnaire was used to investigate 93 university students' coping responses toward 10 SARS-related stressful events and 10 daily life stressful events that generally occur among university students. Results showed that the patterns of coping flexibility were different for the two types of stressful events. The flexible and the active-inflexible patterns were most commonly found in coping with daily life stressful events. By contrast, the passive-inconsistent pattern was dominant when coping with daily life stressful events. Moreover, participants showed lower discriminating ability to situation controllability, and displayed poorer strategy-situation fit to cope with SARS-related events than with daily life stressful events. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.