Profiles of self-leadership in Chinese nurses and their association with coping style

Prior scholarship has largely adopted a variable-centered technique to investigate the relationship between self-leadership and coping style. Such an approach obscures individual heterogeneity and overlooks the configurational interplay of 6 distinct self-leadership strategies that can vary in both magnitude and form. To redress these limitations, this investigation employs latent profile analysis (LPA) to determine Chinese nurses’ self-leadership profiles and to explicate how each profile relates to coping styles. Participants comprised 340 Chinese nurses who provided self-report data on self-leadership strategies and coping style responses. LPA was conducted in Mplus 8.0; the binary coded hexadecimal procedure subsequently evaluated profile-based differences in coping. LPA yielded 3 self-leadership profiles (low, moderate, and high) in Chinese nurses. Active coping peaked in the high self-leadership profile with significant between-group differences, whereas avoidant coping showed only small, nonsignificant cross-profile differences. Distinct differences in coping styles are evident across the low, moderate, and high self-leadership profiles. In practical settings, profile-tailored self-leadership training integrated into the nursing curriculum equips each subgroup with targeted coping skills, thereby mitigating stress in clinical practice.