Exploring student teachers' latent coping profiles and their relations to perceived stress and stressors.

As coping profiles can offer concrete intervention opportunities, the goal of the present study is to explore latent coping profiles in a sample of 316 student teachers at a German university, using the Brief COPE inventory (Carver, 1997). Furthermore, we aim to test the extent to which students with specific coping profiles differ in the levels of stress (PSS; Schneider et al., 2020) and stressors they perceive. Latent profile analysis (LPA) reveals that a six-profile solution shows the optimal fit, with high entropy. The six profiles include two more support-seeking coping profiles (networking and disengaged copers), withdrawn, cognitive restructuring, avoidant and repertoire-oriented copers. Both more support-seeking coping profiles used in particular strategies concerning seeking social and emotional support, and are associated with less stress. Avoidant and withdrawn copers show unfavourable perceptions of stress levels and stressors. Thus, programs to promote social-emotional support should be implemented in teacher training courses.