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Article
Understanding the Relationship of Trauma, Substance Use, and Resilience Among Religiously Affiliated University Students
Faculty Publications
  • Harvey J Burnett, Jr, Andrews University
  • Kristen Witzel, Andrews University
  • Kylah Allers, Andrews University
  • Duane McBride, Andrews University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2016
Abstract

This study examined patterns of association between experiencing 12 traumatic life events, resilience, and substance use at a conservative church-affiliated university. The authors used data (N ¼ 278) from a Health Risk and Protective Factors Study that was conducted during the 2012 spring semester. Initial bivariate analysis indicated several significant positive and negative associations between three of the traumatic life event variables and alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use within the past year and between two of the traumatic life event variables and alcohol use within the past 30 days. Preliminarily, resilience was only inversely associated with amphetamine use within the past year for men. When examined further using partial correlations to clarify these relationships while controlling for resilience, strong significant positive associations were found specifically between experiencing a disaster-type event and alcohol use within the past year and within the past 30 days for men only. Overall significant moderate positive associations were found between experiencing parental divorce and alcohol use within the past year, and between experiencing a disastertype event and alcohol use within the past year and within the past 30 days. Use of two-way between-groups ANOVA found no significant interaction among these variables. Results may suggest that experiencing certain traumatic life events and male gender are more likely connected to alcohol use behaviors, whereas resilience may have multiple pathways for adaptive coping.

Journal Title
Journal of Research on Christian Education
DOI
10.1080/10656219.2016.1237906
First Department
Behavioral Sciences
Citation Information
Harvey J Burnett, Kristen Witzel, Kylah Allers and Duane McBride. "Understanding the Relationship of Trauma, Substance Use, and Resilience Among Religiously Affiliated University Students" Vol. 25 Iss. 3 (2016) p. 317-334
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/duane_mcbride/59/