A BSTRACT Background: Adolescents face a range of challenges throughout their pivotal developmental period, namely academic pressures, social media influence, peer relationships, identity creation, and family dynamics. How adolescents react to these difficulties is mainly determined by their coping strategies, which are behavioral and cognitive attempts to manage stress and sustain well-being. Aim: This study aims to evaluate coping strategies among rural adolescents and investigate differences between coping strategies and sociodemographic factors. Materials and Methods: The study employed a cross-sectional design among ( n = 166) school-going adolescents in Bangarpet rural, Kolar District. The data were collected as the part of the main study, and baseline data alone were analyzed for this study. The Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced and socio-demographic sheet were used to obtain the data. Data were analyzed using the SPSS software (version 29.0). Results: Most adolescents (54%) were 14 years old, most belonged to low-income families (67.5%), and their fathers were mainly employed as daily wage workers (46.4%). Academic performance was high, with 88.6% achieving A+/A grades. Adolescents reported moderate coping strategies with a mean (65.08, standard deviation = 9.40), median 65, and mode 63. Adolescents in the sample appear to cluster around comparable coping strategies rather than displaying significant differences. Conclusion: In a nutshell, despite socioeconomic disadvantages, rural adolescents enrolled in government schools exhibited moderate coping strategies. However, further enhancing their coping strategies emphasizes the importance of equipping them with effective skills to manage stress. The Clinical Trials Registry of India (CTRI) registration number will be provided below the keywords, if required by the journal, which may add the registration number.
Lakshman et al. (Tue,) studied this question.