Coping Profiles and Functioning During Emerging Adulthood: A Comparative Person-Centered Longitudinal Approach

Young adults use a combination of coping strategies to deal with challenges. Yet, limited research has focused on these combinations, as they differ across different profiles of youth and their implications during the major life transitions of emerging adulthood. Addressing this gap, the present longitudinal person-centered study assesses the nature, stability, predictors (stressful life events, sex), and outcomes (affect, attitude toward life, physical symptoms) of coping profiles during this period. Participants were drawn from a nationally representative Swiss sample of emerging adults (n: 1845; 58.53% females; M_age = 19.44; SD_age = 0.62), including subsamples of students (n = 873), and workers (n = 972). Six profiles were replicated over time and across subsamples: (1) Emotion and Avoidance (18.3–25.8% of the sample), (2) Emotion-Oriented (8.7–10.4%), (3) Non-Coping (2.5–3.0%), (4) Task and Avoidance (12.7–16.1%), (5) Average (28.1–41.7%), and (6) Task-Oriented (6.8–25.7%). Profile membership was predicted by dispositional (sex) and situational (life events) factors. Task-oriented profiles displayed the most positive outcomes, whereas non-coping and emotion-oriented profiles, the most negative ones. These findings shed light on the nature of generalizable coping profiles displayed by young adults and identify the task-oriented profiles as the most adaptive for managing the major life transitions of emerging adulthood.