Abstract:

Coping strategies and emotional intelligence help students cope with the challenges of today's rapidly changing world. Theoretically, the use of coping strategies and emotional intelligence cannot be separated from the student's personality, from fundamental life-meaning orientations.

Thus, the hypothesis of this study is that coping strategies and emotional intelligence are interrelated with life-meaning orientations and this relationship differs between first year and fourth year students.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the relationship of coping strategies and emotional intelligence with life-meaning orientations and to analyze whether there is a difference between first-year and fourth-year students.

Sample: first-year students (30 people; Female = 28) and fourth-year students (30 people; Female =22) of the Department of Psychology.
Research methods: coping strategies were measured by the "SACS" questionnaire by S. Hobfall [Fetiskin, 2002]; life-meaning orientations were measured by the test of life-meaning orientations by D. A. Leontiev [Leontiev, 2000]; emotional intelligence was measured by the N. Hall Emotional Intelligence test [Fetiskin, 2002];

Statistical methods: correlation analysis (Spearman rank correlation coefficient); Mann-Whitney U-test. Statistical processing was carried out in the SPSS 20.0.
Results. As a result of the study, it was found that depending on the year of study emotional intelligence and coping-strategies revealed different relationships with life-meaning orientations. Additionally, only two coping strategies were significantly interrelated with life-meaning orientations.

Depending on the course of study, different aspects of emotional intelligence revealed different relationships with life-meaning orientations. Precisely, the first-year students revealed twice as many significant relationships between aspects of emotional intelligence and life-meaning orientations then fourth-year students. First-year and fourth-year students also differed in the revealed number of relationships between coping strategies and life-meaning orientations. For fourth-year students, only one coping strategy "search for social support" was significantly related to one aspect of life-meaning orientations. At the same time, the first-year students revealed negative correlations of the coping strategy “avoidance” with several aspects of life-meaning orientations.

When developing training programs for the development of students’ coping strategies and emotional intelligence, it is important to take into account the students’ life-meaning orientations and their year of study. Conversely, when working with life-meaning orientations, it could be beneficial to take into account the coping strategies and the emotional intelligence.

Keywords:

Coping strategies, emotional intelligence, life-meaning orientations, student's personality.