The current research focused on the contribution of self-control skills and life satisfaction in predicting how Arab adolescents in Israel would cope with stressful situations. hypothesis was that a significant positive relation would be found between self-control skills and effective coping with stressful situations, and a significant positive relation between life satisfaction and non- effective coping with the stressful situation. The research was a convenience sample of five state junior-highs from the Northern Triangle area, with 300 students from seventh to ninth grade. The students are asked to answer three questionnaires which examined self-control skills, life satisfaction, and coping with stressful situations.

The innovation of the current research is that it is conducted among Arab junior-high students from the Muslim Arab sector in general, as one of the mostly conservative populations in which students suffer various stressful situations and distress in high frequency. Adolescence is one crucial factor for conducting the research since it is the age that is usually accompanied by crises, conflicts, and changes. This situation leads to the objective of the current research to examine the life satisfaction and self-control on coping with stressful situations among Arab junior-high students from the northern Triangle area in Israel.

 Children in the Israeli Arab society go through a unique maturation process, since they live in a Jewish state that undergoes social changes and processes of odernization and Israelization on the one hand (Haj Yichie, 1994), and the contrasting process of Islamisation on the other hand, expressed as processes of Palestinasation (Samucha, 2004). These characteristics challenge the adolescents’ perception of the self and self-image, which greatly depend on significant figures in their lives, mainly parents and family members (Haj Yichie, 1994), who might influence the adolescents’ response to various assessment situations (Peleg, 2003).

Coping with stress

Coping is the manner in which people handle stress or the efforts people put into controlling situations of harm, threat, or changes in daily life. It relates to control of situations that require effort and resources to adapt (Shahmohammadi, 2011).

Stress is the body’s and mind’s response to changes in life, and it is a common aspect of various emotions such as concern, frustration, anger, uncertainty, fear, sadness, and despair. It is sometimes accompanied by physical pain such as stomach aches (Shahmohammadi, 2011). Stress can occur in any event or change in daily routine, which requires the individual to change or adapt to cope with frustrations, confrontations and so forth, and can lead to behavioral disorders (Agbaria, Ronen, & Hamama, 2012).

Self-Control

Rosenbaum describes self-control as a cognitive skill of the individual which allows him/her to adapt his/her thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in order to each destinations, overcome difficulties, delay gratifications, and cope with stress (Ronen, 1992).

Life Satisfaction

Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985) noted that satisfaction with life is a construct concerned with an individual’s subjective appraisal of life quality. Direct assessments of life satisfaction contrast with assessments that measure potential elements of life satisfaction (e.g., physical health) but do not account for the value an individual may place on such measures. For example, an individual may struggle with physical health concerns, yet still have high life satisfaction because she or he prioritizes other aspects of life (Diener et al., 1985). Increased life satisfaction has been associated with decreased rates of mortality (Wiest, Schz, Webster, & Wurm, 2011; Xu & Roberts, 2010). Increased levels of stress have been associated with decreased levels of life satisfaction among college students (Anders et al., 2012; Bailey & Miller, 1998; Malinauskas, 2010; Saklofske et al., 2012; Simons et al., 2002; Weinstein & Laverghetta, 2009).