Stress, coping strategies and self-esteem among adolescents in secondary schools in Kampala

Abstract

Study background: This study of stress, coping strategies and self-esteem was carried out in St’ Andrea Kaahwa School and Mengo Senior School in Rubaga Division-Kampala District. The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between stress, coping strategies and self-esteem among adolescents. Methods: A self-administered questionnaire was administered to 200 adolescent respondents, constituting equal numbers of participants from government founded School and nongovernment founded School who filled a self-administered questionnaire. Data processing involved three major activities of cleaning, coding and data entry using SPSS version 23. A one-way ANOVA was used to analyse hypothesis 1, Pearson product moment correlation was used to analyse hypothesis 2, hypothesis 3 was analysed using a T-test. In addition, Hypothesis 4 was analysed using T-test to establish whether or not there are significant differences between School status and stress. Findings: Whereas avoidant coping strategy significantly related to stress all the other coping strategies were insignificant. The study further found out that there are negative significant differences between school status and tress among adolescent students. Study recommendations: The study recommends that both government and private schools should aim to continue providing supportive counselling programs to students to maintain good coping strategies and also High levels of self -esteem. In addition, the Non-Government funded schools exhibited higher levels of stress compared to Government funded Schools. Thus, Non-Government funded schools should adopt programs that support the well-being of students to enable them be positive coopers.