The Impact of Maltreatment History and the Presence of Individual, Familial, and Communal Protective Factors on College Adjustment

Abstract

There is a wealth of studies examining trauma, protective factors, and outcomes in college students. There are questions, however, about how certain protective factors relate to certain types of maltreatment, and how these relationships impact college adjustment. There is also a lack of clarity in the literature as to whether the number of traumatic events experienced is a sufficient measure of trauma history or if the cumulative severity of traumatic experiences must be measured. This study aimed to address these gaps in the protective factors literature by examining relationships between trauma history, protective factors, and college adjustment using the Social Emotional Resources Inventory (SERI), a newly published measure of protective factors (Oberdorfer, Mohr, & Rosén, 2019). Results indicated that both the number of traumatic events endorsed by participants and the cumulative severity ratings they gave the traumatic events they experienced predicted almost the exact same amount of college adjustment. It was also found that maltreatment no longer had a significant relationship with college adjustment when controlling for protective factors. How much more variance cumulative protective factors predicted than cumulative traumas reinforced the emphasis that this paper, and the field, have put on protective factors. The results further indicated that individual protective factors were the strongest predictors of later college adjustment across all types of maltreatment. Self-Esteem, Coping, and Optimism emerged as strong predictors of college adjustment across types of maltreatment. Clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………ii Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1 Trauma Research………………………………………………………………………….1 Trauma in the College Population…………………………….…………………………..3 Differential Impacts of Trauma………………………….