Modeling the Structural Relationships among Personality Traits, Stress Coping Styles and Subjective Well-being of Male and Female Undergraduate Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among extraversion, neuroticism, coping styles and subjective well-being. 419 students (167 male 279 female) completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI, John, Donahue & Kentle, 1991), the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS, Endler, & Parker, 1990) and the Scales of Subjective Well-being. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to assess the gender differences in personality traits, coping styles and subjective well-being and the relationships among latent and measured variables in the conceptual model, respectively. MANOVA results indicated that significant gender differences were found on personality traits, coping styles and subjective well-being. SEM Results indicated that higher levels of subjective well-being were predicted by higher scores of extraversion and lower scores of neuroticism factor and scores of emotion oriented coping style. Results also indicated that the relationship between extraversion and neuroticism factors and subjective well-being by emotion oriented coping styles is mediated. All of the regression weights in the model were statistically significant, and model's predictors accounted for 85% of the variance in subjective well-being. The findings emphasize the need to recognize the role of personality traits and gender differences in predicting subjective well-being. Implications of these results are discussed for health psychologists.