MEANING-LIFE ORIENTATIONS AND COPING STRATEGIES OF GIRLS OF DIFFERENT STUDENT AGES


Student age is a sensory age for the formation of world outlook and life goals, realisation of responsibility for one's life. The search for answers to these questions contributes not only to the formation of an adequate assessment of reality, understanding and awareness of the meaning of life, but also to the formation of constructive ways of solving life problems, the formation of their own special strategies of behaviour. The aim of the work is to establish the correlation between meaning-life orientations and coping strategies of female students of different age groups. The study was conducted on a sample of female students of Tolstoy State Pedagogical University (n=69) aged from 18 to 24 years, studying at different courses of bachelor's and master's degrees. As diagnostic tools we used the D. Leontiev's SZHO test and the questionnaire ‘Ways of coping behaviour’ (WSQ) by R. Lazarus. Correlation analysis showed strong direct correlations between the goals, process and performance of life, the general indicator of life meaningfulness and planning strategy. Strong inverse correlations were found between the index of life performance and the strategies of distancing and escape/avoidance. The study showed that the values of life meaningfulness of female students are higher the older in age the respondents are. Meaning-life orientations influence the choice of coping strategies: for respondents in the age group (≤21) avoidance-type coping strategies.