Review: The development of coping across childhood and adolescence: An integrative review and critique of research

Despite consensus that development shapes every aspect of coping, studies of age differences in coping have proven difficult to integrate, primarily because they examine largely unselected age groups, and utilize overlapping coping categories. A developmental framework was used to organize 58 studies of coping involving over 250 age comparisons or correlations with age. The framework was based on (1) conceptualizations of coping as regulation to suggest ages at which coping should show developmental shifts (Skinner and one reflecting improvements in the deployment of different coping strategies according to which ones are most effective in dealing with specific kinds of stressors. Results were used to formulate guidelines for future research on the development of coping.