journal_vol49no3 - 38

An Investigation of the Impact of Work
Factors and Trauma Exposure on Burnout
in Housing and Residence Life Professionals
HOUSING AND RESIDENCE LIFE PROFESSIONALS help students through
crises and traumatic events, which may affect their own well-being. Members of
higher education student affairs professional organizations, including ACUHO-I,
were surveyed to investigate the following relationships: (1) work factors
(i.e., job demands, job resources, exposure to trauma) and their influence on
burnout and (2) individual factors (i.e., gender, race, number of supervisees,
and years in the profession) and their influence on burnout. Using correlation
and regression analyses, results indicated that as job demands increase, so does
burnout; job resources, however, may mitigate those effects. Fewer years in the
profession and serving in a supervising capacity positively influenced burnout
scores. There were no significant differences by gender or race/ethnicity.
Finally, although exposure to trauma significantly contributed to higher burnout
scores, the meaningfulness of that significance may be small. Implications and
recommendations for practice and research are provided.
P
rofessionals working in housing and residence life (HRL) and in on-call or case
manager roles have complex and multiple student-centered duties. They help
students with homesickness (Sun et al., 2016), connect them to academic programs
(Kuh et al., 2005), build connection through cocurricular involvement (Farrell et
al., 2019), and foster awareness and understanding of diversity (Graham et al., 2021).
Additionally, they are often among the first to respond during crisis situations, day or
night, to help students who are actively in trauma or experiencing traumatic responses
(Cawthon & Schreiber, 2012; Pope et al., 2019).
Students' trauma may stem from individual or campus-wide crises, including suicidal
ideation, the death of a loved one, assault, students' deaths, campus bias incidents,
natural disasters, and community-wide acts of violence (Shaw & Roper, 2017).
Because housing and residence life professionals interact with students in myriad
ways, they are often " the highest touch-points for students " (Graham et al., 2021, p. 4)
in work that is both cognitively and emotionally demanding.
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