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During emerging adulthood, individuals are primarily concerned with themselves. Community participation, however, may help one to mature, and community belonging is important for well‐being. As such, the current study aimed to examine these two components among young‐adult Israeli backpackers abroad. We examined the role of personal (mastery, self‐esteem, and posttraumatic growth) and environmental (family and friends' support) factors in sense of belonging and community participation. A cross‐sectional sample survey was distributed; data were collected from 332 Israeli backpackers abroad. The findings based on t‐tests, Pearson correlations, and hierarchical regression analysis showed that mastery was associated with sense of belonging, not with community participation. Self‐esteem and posttraumatic growth were positively associated with both dependent variables. Friends' support was also positively associated with both dependent variables; family support was not significantly associated with either. Personal factors had the greatest association with sense of community.

Tourists in a disaster area can be aided to develop a variety of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral strategies that will assist them in coping with the trauma. Furthermore, gathering tourists from the same country to conduct interventions on the community level can be helpful. (PsycINFO Database Record

Summary Working with abused children can have positive and negative implications for social workers. Some of these implications have been conceptualized as secondary traumatic stress and vicarious post-traumatic growth. The current study examined the question of whether these two phenomena share similar contributing factors. Based on the social-ecological theory and previous studies on secondary traumatic stress, we examined the contribution of personal factors and level of exposure to trauma (i.e. years of work experience, professional exposure to child abuse, mastery) and environmental factors (i.e. social support, supervision, and role stress) to the explained variance of secondary traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth, with the goal of understanding these two potential outcomes. This cross-sectional study comprised 255 social workers who worked with abused children. Findings The results showed that despite the correlation between the two outcomes—post-traumatic growth and secondary traumatic stress—they shared only one common predictive factor: the extent of social workers’ exposure to abused children. Role stress was correlated positively, and mastery was correlated negatively, with secondary traumatic stress only. Years of work experience was correlated positively with post-traumatic growth only. Applications The current study shows the importance of continuing efforts to identify the factors that contribute to post-traumatic growth. At the same time, efforts should be made to foster certain personal and environmental factors to reduce secondary traumatic stress levels.

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