Personality and Psychological Well-Being of Canadian Forces Officer Candidates: The Role of Coping.

摘要

There is evidence to suggest that both personality and coping strategies that individuals adopt to deal with stressors play an important role in the psychological well-being of military personnel. The overall goal of the study was to understand the multifaceted relationships between personality, coping with stress, and psychological well-being in the military context. Specifically, the study examined various mechanisms by which coping strategies might have influenced the link between personality and psychological well-being or perception of basic training stress of CF Officer Candidates undertaking their basic Officer training (N=200). Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that both personality and coping explained significant and unique proportions of variance in psychological well-being (life satisfaction and psychological health symptoms) and perceptions of training (training satisfaction and training stress). Coping was found to play an important role in psychological well-being and training perceptions of CF candidates, over and above that of personality. Furthermore, hierarchical regression analyses and bootstrapping techniques demonstrated that coping played both a moderating and a partial mediating role in the path between personality and psychological well-being, providing evidence for the differential choice-effectiveness model. The results suggest that providing coping training to CF candidates could be beneficial. Training, focusing on the effectiveness of particular coping strategies (e.g., problem-solving and social support seeking), could be offered to individuals starting their basic training. In addition, training that focuses on stress management and coping, including approaches of setting priorities to balance work and family within the context of the military environment could be beneficial. Further implications of the findings and future research suggestions are discussed.