The relationship between the ways of coping with stress and cognitive flexibility of adolescents between 11-14 years of age

In this study, it was aimed to investigate the relationship between coping styles and cognitive flexibility levels of adolescents and whether these two variables have changedaccording to gender, age, and socioeconomic levels. The study was carried out witha total of 557 students (6th, 7th and 8th grades in the second level of primary education)attending school in 2018-2019 academic year in Pazarcık district of Kahramanmaraş province.The datawere collected by " Cognitive Flexibility Scale " (Martin and Rubin, 1995)adapted to Turkish by Çelikkaleli (2014a) to measure cognitive flexibility, and " Coping Styles Scale" developed by Şahin and Durak (1995) to measure coping styles.In order to determine the students'personal information and socioeconomic level, the researcher has created " Personal Information Form". Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Independent Samples t-Test and One-Way Variance Analysis (Anova) were used to analyse. It was found that there was apositive correlation between cognitive flexibility and self-confident approach. The level of cognitive flexibility did not show a significant difference according to gender of the participants. There was a significant difference between self-confident approachand gender: female students had higher self-confident approach style than male students, the submissive approach was higher in male students' scores and optimistic approach level was higher in female students' scores.There was no significant relationship between age and cognitive flexibility level. A significant negative correlation was found between age and self-confident approach and optimistic approach.There was no significant relationship between monthly average income and cognitive flexibility level. A significant relationship was found between monthly average income and submissive approach.