Functional Limitations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and College Adjustment in Student Veterans: A Mediation Analysis Study

Service-Connected Disability and Happiness in Student Veterans: A Parallel Mediation Study of PERMA

The student veteran population has been growing in higher education, along with the attention to their happiness and well-being. Seligman developed the positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (PERMA) model to help understand an individual’s happiness, including five pillars: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationship, Meaning, and Accomplishment. In this study, we aim at evaluating the role of the PERMA model’s five pillars in explaining the relationship between service-connected disability and happiness. Data were collected from 205 student veterans. The result demonstrated that positive emotion and accomplishment mediated the relationship between service-connected disability and happiness. The findings of this study suggest utilizing positive psychology to help student veterans improve happiness, as well as engage in more activities that could potentially increase an individual’s positive emotion and accomplishment, and eventually increase the level of happiness.

Creating a college adjustment index score for student veterans with and without disabilities

Higher education is a critical public health tool to achieve economic success, upward mobility, and improved quality of life. Yet, certain groups of students, including student veterans with and without disabilities (SVDs), are at high risk for course failure and dropout, partially due to challenges related to college adjustment. The purpose of this study is to develop a new college adjustment index score for SVDs. We had a total of 4 different research studies to examine the psychometric properties of our college adjustment index score. After conducting a series of psychometric analyses, we selected a total of 18-items. This 18-item tool may help clinicians and researchers conceptualize college adjustment among students through the lens of integrative Tinto's model and positive psychology approaches. Our psychometric analyses revealed that this index tool is brief, reliable, and valid tool to capture college adjustment in SVDs.