The Development and Validation of the Secondary Trauma in Resident Assistants Scale

SECONDARY TRAUMATIC STRESS has been described as the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person (Figley, 1999, p. 10). College resident assistants often serve as first-responders to students who have experienced traumatic life events such as severe mental illness, substance abuse, sexual violence, and hate crimes. To date, the literature has not thoroughly addressed the impact of providing this level of support on collegiate resident assistants. This study aimed to explore one possible outcome identified in individuals in other helping professions: secondary traumatic stress. The researcher set out to develop and validate an instrument that may aid in understanding four symptoms associated with secondary trauma within U.S. college resident assistants, as indicated in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V): negative alteration of mood or cognition, arousal and reactivity, avoidance, and intrusive thoughts. Results indicated a four factor model representing internal and external manifestations of negative alteration of mood or cognition, avoidance, and intrusive thoughts. Arousal and reactivity did not emerge as a factor and was therefore excluded. Implications for future research and practical applications are discussed

An Interdisciplinary Approach: Using Social Work Praxis to Develop Trauma Resiliency in Live-In Residential Life Staff

Live-in college residential life positions often involve extensive and diverse responsibilities including the support of residential students experiencing traumatic life events. While live-in staff undergo extensive training in regard to supporting these students, they are often ill-equipped to understand and prevent potential negative consequences associated with trauma support work including burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress. Given the increase in students reporting traumatic life events including sexual violence, severe economic hardships, and severe mental health disabilities, it follows that live-in residential life staff are being called on more frequently to serve as first responders and support personnel for these students. Current literature highlights the potentially deleterious impact of trauma support work on helping professionals, but few publications exist that highlight ways to prevent these effects within a residential life context. This article looks outside of the higher education literature to explore how a related helping profession, social work, provides training and education to social work practitioners in order to mitigate potential negative outcomes stemming from their work with individuals experiencing trauma

Work Environment Factors Impacting the Report of Secondary Trauma in U.S. Resident Assistants

WORKING WITH TRAUMATIZED INDIVIDUALS can have potentially negative impacts on professional support personnel, including cognitive decline, increased anxiety, and declines in physical health. Despite the responsibilities of resident assistants as crisis-responders, few studies explore how they are impacted by secondary trauma. This study sought to understand how specific aspects of the RA work environment relate to their self-reported levels of secondary trauma. Using a sample of RAs (N = 208), the researcher conducted a quantitative secondary analysis of an existing dataset assessing symptoms of secondary traumatic stress in RAs. Findings indicated relationships between a variety of environmental factors and self-reported symptoms of secondary trauma. Findings also suggested that the type of trauma students experienced impacted RAs’ self-report of secondary trauma

Breaking the Silence: A Phenomenological Exploration of Secondary Traumatic Stress in U.S. College Student Affairs Professionals

Breaking the Silence: A Phenomenological Exploration of Secondary Traumatic Stress in U.S. College Student Affairs Professionals is a qualitative-intensive mixed methods study using phenomenology and art-based research techniques to uncover the essence of secondary traumatic stress in U.S. college student affairs professionals. Researchers in the fields of psychology, counseling, social work and other helping professions suggest that repeated exposure to individuals experiencing trauma, or hearing repeated details of an individual’s trauma, have negative outcomes on professional helpers. Coined secondary traumatic stress, this phenomenon may be defined as “the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person” (Figley, 1999, p. 10). Despite severely increasing incidents of student trauma, little scholarship has focused on the impact that support-work may have on the professionals often acting as first responders for students. This study aimed to address this gap in knowledge. Guided by phenomenological methods described by Moustakas (1994), this study investigated the essence of secondary traumatic stress through the lived experiences of 30 college student affairs professionals who have supported students through one or more traumatic events. These individuals were also asked to complete a brief visual representation activity used within their interviews to better understand the nuances of their experience of secondary trauma and how it manifests. A total of seven meta-themes emerged from the data: 1) Cumulative nature of trauma support in higher education 2) Inadequate professional preparation, resources, and guidance 3) Professional’s self-efficacy as an effective support-person 4) Impact of professional and organizational culture on the development of maladaptive views of student support 5) Importance of personal and professional support networks 6) Personal impact of professional’s relationship with student(s) in crisis 7) The negative impact of support-work on personal wellness. These themes suggested that the professionals in this study experienced negative psychological and physical outcomes as a result of their work supporting students through trauma. Findings also suggested the repetitive and collective nature of student trauma within student affairs work. Implications for policy, practice, and future research are discussed

The Cost of Majority-Party Bias: Amending Activity under Structured Rules

All major legislation in the House necessitates a special rule from the Rules Committee before it can be brought to the chamber floor. These rules often strictly limit floor amendments to bills considered by the House. Scholars of political parties have argued that the House majority party can bias policy output away from the floor median through its usage of restrictive rules. In this article, we argue that in order to secure the passage of restrictive rules, the majority often makes concessions to centrist legislators through the amending process. We examine this theory using a newly collected data set that includes all amendments considered by the Rules Committee during the construction of structured rules in the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005–2010). Our results are mixed, but they do suggest that moderate members of the majority party often receive concessions via amendments for their support of the majority party's agenda-setting regime

Breaking The Silence: An Arts-Based Phenomenological Exploration Of Secondary Traumatic Stress In U.S. Student Affairs Professionals

Historically, college student affairs personnel have played a crucial role in student development, support, and success. Today, these professionals have found themselves increasingly acting in the capacity of first responders for various student crises. Literature in other helping professions such as social work, K-12 education, and counseling all indicate that repeated or extreme exposure to traumatic events, or details of traumatic events, can have a significant negative impact on the well-being of professional helpers. Currently, literature centered on individuals working in college student affairs does not directly address the issue of secondary traumatic stress. It is the aim of this study to explore the impact of trauma- support work on student affairs professionals by exploring this phenomenon through the lived experiences of professionals who have supported students who have experienced trauma

Efficient, Responsive, and Robust Hopping on Deformable Terrain

Legged robot locomotion is hindered by a mismatch between applications where legs can outperform wheels or treads, most of which feature deformable substrates, and existing tools for planning and control, most of which assume flat, rigid substrates. In this study we focus on the ramifications of plastic terrain deformation on the hop-to-hop energy dynamics of a spring-legged monopedal hopping robot animated by a switched-compliance energy injection controller. From this deliberately simple robot-terrain model, we derive a hop-to-hop energy return map, and we use physical experiments and simulations to validate the hop-to-hop energy map for a real robot hopping on a real deformable substrate. The dynamical properties (fixed points, eigenvalues, basins of attraction) of this map provide insights into efficient, responsive, and robust locomotion on deformable terrain. Specifically, we identify constant-fixed-point surfaces in a controller parameter space that suggest it is possible to tune control parameters for efficiency or responsiveness while targeting a desired gait energy level. We also identify conditions under which fixed points of the energy map are globally stable, and we further characterize the basins of attraction of fixed points when these conditions are not satisfied. We conclude by discussing the implications of this hop-to-hop energy map for planning, control, and estimation for efficient, agile, and robust legged locomotion on deformable terrain.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Robotic