The Structure of Social Coping among Chinese Gifted Children and Youths in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study examined the structure of social coping across 2 age groups of 716 Chinese gifted children and youths based on 7 social coping strategies assessed by the Chinese Social Coping Questionnaire. To evaluate whether these strategies could be applied adequately to younger as well as older students, 3 models hypothesizing different degrees of equivalence across the 2 age groups were tested using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Despite the similarities, there was suggestive evidence that the 7 social coping strategies might correlate differentially and to various degrees with each other for the two different age groups. Subsequent second-order confirmatory factor analyses separately conducted for the 2 age groups indicated that 2 overall strategies of social-interaction coping and minimizing-differences coping between self and peers encompassed the 7 specific social coping strategies. Implications of the findings, including subtle differences in the interpretation of discounting popularity by older and younger students, are discussed.