Past Traumatic Experiences and Current College Adjustment

Prior research suggests that experiencing a past trauma may affect a student's adjustment to college. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that students who have been exposed to a traumatic event at some point in their life will have lower levels of adjustment than their peers who have not been exposed to a traumatic event. Participants (n=192) were students from a Christian liberal arts university in the Midwest who were selected from various lower and upper division classes. They were first asked to sign informed consent and then received a 27 question survey containing demographic data, the College Adjustment Scale (Pennebaker 1990), and questions about experiencing a past trauma. Data were collected and entered into SPSS for analysis. A multiple regression will be used to analyze the hypothesis and results will be discussed.