Care-­Staff Coping, Personality and Attitudes to Aggression: Analysis of the Interplay

This study examined residential care-staff’s personality, attitudes to aggression and coping responses of exposure to extreme behaviour. It aimed to replicate relationships between personality and coping at a factor level and to examine these associations in more detail at a facet level. The influence of attitudes to aggression on these relationships was also explored. Participants were care-staff from two residential units for the continuing care of young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties in Ireland. Fifteen staff completed the brief COPE, NEO-PI-R and shortened version of the Perception of Aggression Scale. Dispositional coping was measured in the specific context of work-stress from exposure to extreme behaviour. Analysis of relationships was through correlation and regression techniques. Moderation analysis was conducted through GLMs. Results showed some large personality-coping associations, but not all in the predicted directions. Facet-level analysis showed demonstrations of a more complex relationship than the factor level. Attitudes to aggression and gender moderated the relationship between personality and coping at both a factor and facet level, with both strengthening and reversal effects. A complex pattern of associations at a facet level may partially explain existing difficulties in replication of relationships between factors of personality and coping. Moderators may also account for some of the variance of effect sizes and directions of associations in previous studies