Abstract
This study investigated the influence of the type of school that students attended and the effects it has on an individual’s stress and coping while also looking at the moderating roles self-esteem, self-efficacy, personality and optimism have in relation to stress and coping. Questionnaires were filled out by a total of 90 participants, 37 of which attended private schools and 53 who attended public schools. The questionnaires used were the (GHQ-12:Goldberg, 1978), the Big Five personality (NEO PI-R: Costa & Mc Crea, 1992), general Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE: Schwartzer & Jerusalem, 1995) and the Values in Action (VIA scale: Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Strong correlations were found between stress and coping (avoidance coping) among students, indicating that students in denial for example ‘I’ve been saying to myself this isn’t real’ are showing greater distress. General happiness was also shown a significant difference between gender with females showing to be generally happier than males (t(88) = -2,899, p<0.05, 2-tailed). Author keywords: Private school, public school, stress, coping, self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism, general health, personality
