Investigation of the relationship between social support and coping with stress of high school students

Aim: This study was conducted to examine the relationship between high school students' social support and coping with stress. Material and Method: The research was carried out with 423 students (69.3% (n = 293) girls; 30.7% (n = 130) boys) who continue their high school education in Eskişehir in the 2020-2021 academic year. Personal Information Form, Social Support Scale for Children and Adolescents (CESDÖ) and Stress Coping Scale were used as data collection tools. The SPSS 26.0 program was used in the statistical analysis of the research conducted with the scanning model, which is a quantitative research technique. The relationships between the students' coping with stress scale and the sub-dimensions of the Child Adolescent Social Support Scale (CESDÖ) and their total scores were tested with correlation analysis. In all analyzes, the value of p≤.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: According to the findings of the study, students' coping with stress and social support shows significant differences according to age, gender, number of siblings, education level of mother and education level of father. According to the analysis results of the relationship between students' coping with stress and their social support levels, significant differences occurred among some sub-dimensions of coping with stress (problem solving, seeking social support, religious coping, self-abstraction, seeking professional support, and avoidance) and all dimensions of the social support scale. At the same time, a significant relationship was found between the total scores of coping with stress and the total scores of the social support scale. Conclusion: As a result of the study, it was determined that there were highly significant positive relationships between the total scores of the stress coping scale and the sub-dimensions of the scale, while it was observed that there were weakly and moderately significant positive relationships among other variables and scores. Key Words: High school students, social support, stress, coping stress, coping stress strategies