Longitudinal patterns of stability and change in coping across three competitions: a latent class growth analysis.

An unresolved issue in the coping literature concerns the traitlike versus statelike nature of coping utilization. The aim of this study was to illustrate the benefits of moving beyond the sole reliance on mean-level and rank-order analyses in order to identify heterogeneous patterns of longitudinal stability and change in coping utilization. More specifically, this study hypothesized that not all athletes would change their coping across competitions, nor do all "changers" change in a similar manner.