Investigation of the relationship between school psychological counselors' stress coping styles with emotional intelligence and self-compassion

The purpose of this research is to examine whether the way in which psychological counselors' coping styles with stress according to the variables of gender, marital status, having children, graduated department, level of education, type of institution, number of psychological counselors, educational stage, professional seniority, the number of students served and to examine the relationship between the ways in which counselors' coping styles with stress and emotional intelligence and self-compassion. The sample of the research consists of 464 counselors in 7 different regions of Turkey in the 2023-2024 academic year. The research data were collected with the Coping Styles Scale, Emotional Intelligence Trait Scale-Short Form, Self-Compassion Scale and Personal Information Form. Independent samples t-test was used to determine whether counselor's coping styles with stress differed significantly according to gender, marital status, having children, graduated department, level of education, type of institution, and the number of counselors; ANOVA was performed for the variables of educational stage, professional seniority and the number of students served. Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine relationship between the variables. According to the findings of the research, it was observed that while the counselors' coping styles with stress didn't differ significantly in terms of gender, graduated department, level of education, educational stage and number of students served; they differed significantly in terms of marital status, having children, type of institution, number of counselors and professional seniority variables. It was observed that emotional intelligence and self compassion levels significantly predicted coping styles with stress. The findings obtained from the research were discussed in the light of the literature and suggestions were made.