Research I. Week 13

Kaitlin Crandall, Alison Murray, and Paola Ramirez

Silberman School of Social Work

November 11, 2019

Research I Fall 2019

According to The National Domestic Violence Hotline, more than half of college students (57%) experience dating violence and abuse in college (Statistics, 2019). Therefore, the focus of the paper will be on answering the following question: Do undergraduate students who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) have higher severity levels of PTSD compared to other undergraduate students who have experienced non-IPV traumatic events. Furthermore, we will discuss our methodology which will describe our target population, sampling strategy, measurement, limitations and our survey instrument. Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Suggest finding a more rigorous citation – this source is not a strong one Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Interesting comparison group! What about survivors of both IPV and non-IPV traumatic events? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Good job outlining what is to come

Target Population and Data Collection Comment by Melissa Meinhart: This is a fantastic start!!

For this study we will be targeting undergraduate students within the United States actively enrolled in private and public accredited colleges and universities. We will use accredited institutions using stratified random sampling to identify an equitable percentage of public, private, 4-year, and 2-year institutions in each of the 50 states. We will contact the Student Affairs, or variant, at each of the identified institutions and ask that they share the survey link with the student body via email. Prior research suggests that this population has a high prevalence (57%) of intimate partner violence (IPV) (Statistics, 2019). Inclusion criteria includes: (1) student is taking at least one course at a participating institution and (2) student is 18 or older. Individuals with severe cognitive impairments will be excluded from participating from in the study. Based on these criteria, wWe expect to have a sample size of 5,000 respondents based on a 60% response rate. Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Sample from? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: How will you identify the sample frame – is there a list available online (with the name and type of school?) Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Okay – so stratifying based on typology (public, private, 4-year, 2-year) then randomly sampling X number of schools in each? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Great detail! Comment by Melissa Meinhart: What kind of response rate do you expect (both from the schools and from the emails?) Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Earlier, you say this is DV – unclear whether the focus is DV or IPV Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Should you also have inclusion criteria about needing to experience either IPV or another type of non-traumatic event? Your earlier section indicates that you are not including individuals who have not experienced IPV nor another type of traumatic event. (It is unclear how/if you’ll include individuals who have experienced both) Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Good! Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Good!! 60% response rate from the emails or 60% of the universities will be receptive to your request for research?

Sampling Strategy

The purpose is to understand the severity of symptoms that each group experiences, provide intervention for prevalence of different symptoms, and gain knowledge about which traumas continuously lead to certain symptoms. The purpose is to identify the level of trauma’s that each group experienced and the severity of a mental condition that may arise as a result. The sampling design that we want to pursue is stratified random sampling, we hope to include those that can describe their symptoms through a series of surveys throughout each college. We will randomly select 50 colleges from each region and the students will be identified through part-time and full-time enrollment. The stratum that will be used will be by age, sexual orientation, gender, and race, location and level of education. Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Suggest to pull this up earlier since this narrative focuses on the purpose rather than sampling Comment by Melissa Meinhart: From each region or each of the four typologies included in the above section? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: All of the students? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Okay – I see below that it is 250 students per school. How will you identify which of the 250 students receive the survey? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: I thought the strata were the type of universities? Are you now sampling across these strata – this section does not match the above section… suggest your group reviews for consistency before the next draft

From each institution 250 participants will be selected for the study and out of that number about 20% of the sample will be randomly drawn for analysis. To introduce the research to the schools, we will present a brief presentation to student affairs administrators based on Domestic Violence & Mental Health Awareness. Then we would encourage the administrators to disseminate surveys to students throughout various departments, such as the Counseling office, Student Affairs and Student Life. In addition to students' emails. This study is both cross sectional and exploratory due to the students being observed during one session and we will address our hypothesis regarding the prevalence of PTSD amongst those that experienced IPV. The intention behind the stratified sampling strategy for this study is to approach it from a probabilistic stance to encourage diversity. Comment by Melissa Meinhart: What is the rationale for this? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Good detail! Comment by Melissa Meinhart: ? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: The observation component is unclear

Measurement Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Very detailed – well done!

Since we are researching the severity of PTSD symptomology between undergraduate students who have experienced IPV versus undergraduate students who have experienced non-IPV traumatic events, we have concluded that the independent variable is intimate partner violence victimization. The dependent variable is PTSD severity since we will be measuring and comparing the present levels of PTSD symptoms between these two groups. In order to examine the severity of PTSD symptoms between these two groups, we will be utilizing the PTSD Symptom Scale Interview (PSS-I) which was developed in 1993 by Foa, Riggs, Dancu, & Rothbaum. The first part of the PSS-I asks the individual to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ if they have experienced a specific type of traumatic event listed in the survey. The last two questions ask the individual if they have answered ‘Yes’ to more than one, to write down the number of the question of which event was the worse and if this is the reason why they are seeking counseling (for the purpose of this study, we will be excluding the last question on the first part of the survey because it does not relate to what we are researching). If the individual does answer ‘Yes’ to the last question, there are six follow up ‘yes or no’ questions such as if the individual feels helpless and if they think their life is in danger. Comment by Melissa Meinhart: It seems like your IV is actually trauma exposure (IPV yes or no)

The second part of the PSS-I is a 17-item-semi-structured interview that assesses the severity of DSM-IV PTSD criteria, including re-experiencing, avoidance and arousal symptom clusters (e.g., “Have you had recurrent or intrusive distressing thoughts or recollections about the traumatic event?”). There is a zero (not at all) to three (5 or more times per week) response scale which records the frequency of each symptom in the last two weeks. The PSS-I takes about 20 minutes to complete; each item is assessed with a brief question – there are no follow up questions. The PSS-I was found to have satisfactory internal consistency (.91), high test-retest reliability, good concurrent and convergent validity with sexual assault victims (Foa et al., 1993). The sociodemographic variables we believe to be important and relevant to our measurement are the age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, education and location.

We are interested in finding out how the participants of the research study will respond to the following questions: What do you know about PTSD, In what ways do you feel this traumatic event has affected your educational performance, What do you do for self-care and If you ever received counseling – what was your experience like. We are curious to see if the participants of the study will answer these questions with honesty for us to establish credibility and transparency which will allow us to use and analyze this data further. We are also interested to see how many participants will respond to our survey overall; how many of them consider themselves to be part of the LGBTQ+ community, their age group, race/ethnicity and location.

Limitations Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Very well written!

We have identified the following limitations of our current study: (1) it does not capture all non-survivors; (2) survivors with severe cognitive impairments; and (3) it lacks a global perspective. Unfortunately, due to the violent nature of intimate partner violence (IPV), there are individuals who have died from their injuries therefore we will never truly be able to assess the impact the trauma had on their psyche. Therefore, it is not feasible to study this population. Additionally, individuals with severe cognitive impairments are not exempt from experiencing IPV, however their vulnerability makes it difficult to obtain truly informed consent. Furthermore, we were not able to explore this topic from a global perspective due to language barriers, varying cultural views of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and IPV. However, the knowledge we will be able to achieve will still provide generalizable information for the United States.

Conclusion

Prior research has identified the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in undergraduate students in the United States compared to other populations. This current study seeks to explore the implications of this prevalence. Particularly, how different traumas (IPV and other major life events) can negatively impact health outcomes (PTSD symptomology).

References

Foa, E., Riggs, D., Dancu, C., & Rothbaum, B.(1993). Reliability and validity of a brief

instrument for assessing post-traumatic stress disorder. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 6,

459-474. doi: 10.1007/BF00974317

Statistics. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.thehotline.org/resources/statistics/

Annex

Survey Instrument

1. What is your age?

· 17 or younger

· 18-20

· 21-29

· 30-39

· 40-49

· 50-59

· 60 or older

2. What is your sexual orientation?

· Asexual

· Bisexual

· Gay

· Heterosexual or straight

· Lesbian

· Pansexual

· Queer

· None of the above, please specify

3. What is your gender identity?

· Woman

· Man

· Genderqueer or non-binary

· Agender

· Not specified above, please specify

4. What race do you identify with? (Check all that apply)

· White

· Black or African-American

· American Indian or Alaskan Native

· Asian

· Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

· Latino/Hispanic

· Some other race (please specify)

5. Are you currently enrolled as a student?

· Yes, full time at a four year undergraduate college/university

· Yes, part time at a four year undergraduate college/university

· Yes, full time at a two year undergraduate college/university

· Yes, part time at a two year undergraduate college/university

· No, I am not currently enrolled as a student

6. How many credits have you taken at the undergraduate level thus far?

· 0-20 credits

· 21-40 credits

· 41-60 credits

· 61-80 credits

· 81-100 credits

· 101-120 credits

· 120+ credits

7. What do you know about Posttraumatic Stress Disorder? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: I like the idea of including a question like this! Suggest to provide more of a prompt to encourage responses along the lines of your interest. For example, I could see how someone might respond with “nothing” or a full antedote about their experiences or an explanation of the diagnoses critera.

Below is a list of traumatic events or situations. Please mark YES if you have experienced or witnessed the following events or mark NO if you have not had that experience.

8. Serious accident, fire or explosion

· Yes

· No

9. Natural disaster (tornado, flood, hurricane, major earthquake)

· Yes

· No

10. Non-sexual assault by someone you know (physically attacked/injured)

· Yes

· No

11. Non-sexual assault by a stranger

· Yes

· No

12. Sexual assault by a family member or someone you know

· Yes

· No

13. Sexual assault by a stranger

· Yes

· No

14. Military combat or a war zone

· Yes

· No

15. Sexual contact before you were age 18 with someone who was 5 or more years older than you

· Yes

· No

16. Imprisonment

· Yes

· No

17. Torture

· Yes

· No

18. Life-threatening illness

· Yes

· No

19. Other traumatic event

· Yes

· No

Other (please specify)

20. Of the question to which you answered YES, which was the worst? Please list the question #.

Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Like you’ve done above, please adjust this to your own formatting (rather than inserting this copy)

24. What do you do for self-care? Comment by Melissa Meinhart: Great questions! I really like the way you’ve worded the last one. My only suggestion would be to swap #24 and #25 (so you end on a less heavy question)

25. If you ever received counseling, what was your experience like?