The Relationship Between Coping Strategies and Types of Eating Behaviour in Students

Abstract

The study examined the relationships between coping strategies and types of eating behaviour in first-year students enrolled in the Management programme at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. The aim of the study was to identify coping strategies associated with restrained, emotional and external eating. The Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) and COPE-30, the Russian-language short version of the COPE inventory, were used in the study. The sample comprised 68 students. Spearman’s correlation analysis was applied to the data. The results showed that eating behaviour was most strongly associated with mental disengagement, behavioural disengagement, denial, lower levels of planning, and reliance on external means of regulating emotional state. Emotional eating was associated with mental disengagement, behavioural disengagement, denial, and lower levels of planning. External eating was associated with disengagement-based strategies, as well as with seeking social support for instrumental reasons, religion, and humour. Restrained eating was associated with behavioural disengagement and the use of ‘tranquillisers. The findings suggest that students’ eating behaviour may be understood as part of broader patterns of psychological self-regulation under stressful conditions.