The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1 - 25

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

Given the widespread nature of
traumatic events in higher education
institutions, campus leaders are
quickly finding that their institutions
lack the professional capacity to
meet the needs of these students .

peer-support roles such as orientation leaders,
TRiO mentor programs, or First-Year Experience mentor programs. This instrument may
also be useful in comparative studies using
quality of life measures such as the ProQOL
(Stamm, 2010). Finally, given the homogeneity
of this study's sample, future studies should be
conducted to investigate secondary trauma as
it applies to diverse demographics.

CONCLUSION
in-depth look at how the RA role is impacting their student staff. Resulting information
may help leaders redefine the role of the RA
on college and university campuses or inform
hiring practices for live-in student staff. For
instance, job descriptions may include a statement regarding required counselor evaluation
on a periodic basis or at least immediately following support of a major trauma within an
RA's community.

Future Scholarship
Although the results of this study take a step in
illustrating the experience of secondary traumatic stress in U.S. college resident assistants,
there is still much left to understand about this
phenomenon. The instrument provides a tool
to extend future scholarship in regard to the intersection of student trauma and peer support.
Examples may include repeated measures
studies identifying the impact of various training interventions on instrument results or longitudinal studies to better understand patterns
of secondary traumatic stress. The instrument
may also be used as a template for the creation of related instruments to investigate secondary trauma in undergraduate or graduate

College resident assistants in the United States
are often called upon as first-responders to
crises that many professionals themselves
would consider challenging, at best. For
decades, scholars and practitioners in higher
education have invested a great deal of time
and resources in understanding how to develop
the full capacity of resident assistants in order
to most effectively meet the needs of an ever
evolving student body. Yet few scholars and
practitioners have called attention to the potential impact of the resident assistant's work
on the individual student. Those that do often
frame their discussion around the concept of
burnout or job attrition. One overarching goal
of this study was to call attention to a potentially detrimental impact identified in many
helping professions that has yet to be explored
within the resident assistant role: secondary
traumatic stress. The researcher's primary goal
was to develop an instrument that allows scholars and practitioners to identify key symptoms
related to secondary trauma.
The results of this study yielded a tool that
indicates standard criteria associated with the
validity and reliability of a survey instrument.
Additionally, the results of the pilot survey also
painted a poignant, yet informative, portrait

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1

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