The relationship between life events, life satisfaction, and coping style of college students

Abstract

We aimed to investigate the life events, life satisfaction, and coping style of college students, and to assess the relationship between them by performing mediating effect analysis. Our findings may provide a scientific basis for promoting the mental health of college students. Students in a medical college were selected using grade-stratified cluster sampling, and administered a standardized questionnaire survey. Out of 2,000 participants, 1827 participants provided valid questionnaires (response rate: 91.4%). The mean scores of life satisfaction and life events were 181.39 ± 30.28 and 19.32 ± 15.62, respectively. The mean score of coping style was 14.34 ± 7.54, which reflected positive coping style. Analysis of life satisfaction, life events, and factor scores showed that different grades, sibling status (whether the respondent was the only child in the family or not), family location, and life events had a significant association with life satisfaction (p < 0.001). There were significant differences in coping style between male and female students, and between students in different grades (p < 0.001). Positive coping style was found to play a partial mediating role between life events and life satisfaction, and the mediating effect accounted for 33.2% of the total effect. These results suggest that both life events and coping styles are related to college students’ life satisfaction. The impact of life events on life satisfaction can be adjusted by psychological interventions to develop coping styles that can help promote the mental health of college students.