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Housing and residence life professionals experience not only the
stressors of their work environment but also those associated with
their role as helpers; this can diminish their capacity to experience
and project the necessary empathy to effectively function in their jobs.
In the context of HRL professionals, a job demand may be the emotional and
cognitive requirements of balancing crisis management and administrative duties
when facing a particularly challenging responsibility, such as relocating an entire
floor of students after a flood. Job resources are aspects of the job that are essential
to achieve organizational goals and can have positive effects, such as reducing job
demands and helping to build professional skills outside the trauma helping situations.
In the context of HRL professionals, a job resource might be the social support
that professionals provide to each other before, during, and after critical situations.
Another job resource may be developing evaluation skills by serving on a committee
to award student scholarships. High job demands combined with high job resources
result in positive work engagement (Demerouti et al., 2001), but a mismatch between
demands and resources can result in apathy or burnout.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Most student affairs research on professional well-being focuses on the individual
(Lynch & Glass, 2019; Mullen et al., 2018; Rosser & Javinar, 2003; Tull, 2014), but
the work environment also has a role. Investigating how the work environment influences
professional well-being is an emergent area of investigation in student affairs
(Lynch, 2022). This study furthers this line of inquiry by focusing on how work factors
(i.e., exposure to trauma, job demands, and job resources) influence burnout in
student affairs helpers.
Three research questions framed the study.
1. What is the relationship among job demands, job resources, and exposure to trauma
and burnout in HRL professionals and on-call/case managers?
2. What individual factors (i.e., gender, race, supervision, years in the profession) and
work factors most influence burnout in HRL professionals?
3. Does exposure to trauma have a statistically significant relationship to burnout?
METHODS
We developed a 69-item survey to assess HRL professionals' self-reported levels of
job demands, job resources, exposure to trauma at two points in time (the previous 30
days and an undefined period), and experiences of burnout. In addition to demographic
items and types of trauma addressed, the survey incorporated elements of the Job
Demands-Resources Model of Burnout (JD-R; Demerouti et al., 2019) and the entire
Oldenburg Burnout Inventory. We used 10 subscales of the JD-R: five job demand
subscales (i.e., work pressure, cognitive demands, emotional demands, role conflict,
and hassles) and five job resource subscales (i.e., autonomy, social support, feedback,
opportunities for development, and coaching). All subscale items were measured on a
Volume 49, No. 3 * 2023 39
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