Vanacore, Sarah. Childhood adversity and social support as factors in student veterans' academic outcomes. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3QF8X7F
DescriptionAs veterans enter higher education at great numbers, colleges and universities have struggled to find ways to support them. This study considered factors that may affect student veterans’ educational outcomes through two sets of analyses. The first set of analyses addressed three research questions related to the main effects and moderation of childhood adversity, social support, and veteran status on grade point average (GPA). The second set of analyses considered veterans in closer detail, investigating whether social support protects student veterans from worse educational outcomes associated with childhood adversity. I hypothesized that both childhood adversity and veteran status will have independent, negative relations with GPA and that veterans with a history of childhood adversity would have lower GPAs than their civilian peers. I also hypothesized that social support would moderate the relation between childhood adversity and GPA in the sample of student veterans. However, this study did not support these hypotheses. This may suggest that there were other variables involved, such as other lifetime experiences, or protective factors that I did not measure.