The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 1 - 67

Secondary Trauma in RAs

symptoms included the following: arousal and
reactivity, intrusion, avoidance, and negative
alteration to mood or cognition (American
Psychiatric Association, 2013). Participants
rated items using a 6-point Likert scale: 1 =
completely untrue, 6 = completely true.

METHODS
Dependent Variables
The five scales of the STRAS instrument were
used as the dependent variables for this study
and included intrusion (∝ = .89), avoidance (∝
= .89), negative alteration to mood and cognition-internal (∝ = .88), negative alteration to
mood and cognition-external (∝ = .88), and
secondary traumatic stress (∝ = .94). Lynch
(2017) contains a complete list of items associated with the STRAS instrument.

Intrusion (INT). This scale measured the
extent to which a particular trauma incident
unintentionally remains in an RA's day-to-day
consciousness. Participants rated items such
as "Supporting students who have experienced
various traumas has left me feeling as if I was
reliving the trauma experienced by residents."

Avoidance (AVD). This scale measured the
extent to which an RA avoids people, places,
and thoughts related to their support of residents experiencing trauma. Participants rated
items such as "Supporting students who have
experienced various traumas has left me avoiding working with some residents, if possible."

Negative alteration to mood or cognitionexternal (NAMEX). This scale measured the
extent to which an RA's work has negatively
impacted their relationships with others and
their interactions with the external world. Participants rated items such as "Supporting stu-

dents who have experienced various traumas
has left me less physically active than usual."

Negative alteration to mood or cognitioninternal (NAMIN). This scale measured the
extent to which an RA's work has negatively
impacted their thought processes and emotions. Participants rated items such as "Supporting students who have experienced various
traumas has left me feeling empty."

Secondary traumatic stress (STRAS). This
scale uses an average of all items from the
subscales INT, AVD, NAMEX, and NAMIN to
create a composite secondary traumatic stress
score between 1 and 6, with 1 indicating lesser
magnitudes of self-reported symptoms of secondary trauma and 6 indicating higher magnitudes of self-reported symptoms.

Independent Variables
Several independent variables related to the
RA work environment were used to assess the
impact of trauma support work on resident
assistants. These included RA caseload, experience, training, trauma type, and volume of
trauma support.

RA caseload. Other helping professions have
reported caseload as a potential catalyst for secondary traumatic stress (Hensel et al., 2015). RA
caseload was measured by asking participants
to select the number of residents they directly
serve in their floor community. They selected
from a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = less
than 20, 2 = 20-40, 3 = 41-60, 4 = 61-80, 5 =
81-100, and 6 = more than 100.

RA experience. Other helping professions
have reported length of service as a potential
catalyst for secondary traumatic stress (Siegfried, 2008). RA experience was measured
by asking participants to select the number of
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 46, No. 1

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