Denial, Use of emotional support, Use of instrumental support, and Religion. In the
rest of the surveyed factors, no statistically significant differences were recorded.
Figure 3. Substance use (COPE-b) assessment comparison between male and
female managers
These results testify to the fact that the male managers have a greater tendency to
cope with stress actively, or mitigate it by substance use or humor as opposed to the
female managers, who tend to react to stress emotively. In solving the demanding
situation, the female managers also tend to seek support among their social contact and
in the spiritual area, or they tend to deny the given situation, trying to avert their
attention from it by means of another activity.
Research on the differences in coping between managers and non-managers.
The aim of the second research study was to contribute to the previous enrichment of
the field of knowledge relating to coping with demanding, stressful situations by
managers. The following study also relates to the identification and specification of
differences in the assessment of the selected coping strategies by managers and non-
managerial workers.
The research file consisted of 340 respondents, of which 129 were managers
(37.9%) and 211 were non-managers (62.1%). The sample of 129 managers consisted
of 55 men (42.6%) and 74 women (57.4%) aged between 19 and 54 years (M = 29
years, SD = 8.601 years). 103 managers (79.8%) were from the private economic sector
and 26 managers (20.2%) were from the public sector. The sample of 211 non-
managers consisted of 69 men (32.7%) and 142 women (67.3%). 93 non-managers
(44.1%) were from the private economic sector and 34 non-managers (16.1%) were
from the public sector, and the option “other” was marked by 84 non-managers
(39.8%).
Differences in the assessment of the coping strategies between the managers and
the non-managers were analyzed by means of t-tests for two independent selections (in
one case the Mann-Whitney U-test was used) in the statistical software SPSS 20. The
acquired results confirmed the existence of statistically significant differences between
- 903 -