Professional Documents
Culture Documents
doi: 10.1093/sw/swt044
34
35
Participants
36
SD
41
34
34
41
38
100
82.9
82.9
100
92.7
40.98
9.21
6.41
3.44
3.65
2.36
34
7
82.9
17.1
20
7
11
3
37
48.8
17.1
26.8
7.3
90.2
1
8
16
2
14
38
2.4
19.5
39
4.9
34.1
92.7
2
6
11
7
8
7
4.9
14.6
26.8
17.1
19.5
17.1
15
9
7
3
3
4
36.6
22
17.1
7.3
7.3
9.8
Social Work
The responses of the 41 participants who completed the survey were included in the analyses.
Outliers were found in the MAAS and three
PRoQOL subscales (four in MAAS, two in compassion satisfaction, one in secondary traumatic
stress, and two in burnout) and were corrected to
create a more normally distributed sample using
the nearest score-plus-one method (Field, 2009).
Reliability analyses were run for all scales: Cronbachs was high for the MAAS (.91) and the compassion satisfaction subscale (.88) and was acceptable
for the secondary traumatic stress subscale (.78), but
it was low for the burnout subscale (.65).
Descriptive Statistics
37
traumatic stress, and 19.63 (SD = 4.93) for burnout. No participants scored in the low range for
compassion satisfaction, and 71 percent (n = 29)
scored in the high range. For secondary traumatic
stress, 71 percent (n = 29) scored in the low range,
and no participants scored in the high range that
indicates problems. For burnout, no participants
scored in the high range that indicates problems,
and 76 percent scored in the low range. These
results are summarized in Table 2.
Correlation
SD
Minimum
Maximum
Cronbachs
MAAS
PRoQOLs
Compassion satisfaction
Secondary traumatic stress
Burnout
4.25
0.64
3.13
5.47
0.91
42.39
20.66
19.63
4.80
4.00
4.93
33
13
11
50
30
31
0.88
0.78
0.65
Note: MAAS = Mindful Attention Awareness Scale; ProQOL = Professional Quality of Life Scale.
Table 3: Independent Means t Tests for MAAS and PRoQOL Subscales (N = 41)
Bereaved
Instrument
MAAS
PRoQOL
Compassion satisfaction
Secondary traumatic stress
Burnout
Yes
(n = 34)
M (SD)
No
(n = 7)
M (SD)
tdf
95% CI
Cohens d
4.25 (0.65)
4.26 (0.65)
0.03
39
.98
[0.55, 0.54]
0.02
42.47 (5.03)
20.21 (4.04)
20.00 (5.27)
42.00 (3.79)
22.86 (3.24)
17.86 (2.19)
0.23
1.63
1.05
39
39
39
.82
.11
.30
[3.61, 4.55]
[5.95, 0.64]
[1.99, 6.28]
0.11
0.72
0.53
Note: MAAS = Mindful Attention Awareness Scale; PRoQOL = Professional Quality of Life Scale.
38
Social Work
This study has a number of limitations. It was conducted with a small, homogenous sample (n = 41)
drawn from a single agency. This population has
some unique features, such as the narrow group
they serve (traumatically bereaved) and the nding
that the majority (83 percent) has experienced a
traumatic event in the form of child death. Due to
the small number of nonbereaved parents, potential
differences between these two groups could not be
adequately explored. In addition, participants may
have experienced other forms of trauma not captured by this survey. A similar study with a different
helping population might yield different results.
Even though responses were anonymous, respondents may have been motivated by social desirability
bias. In addition, approximately 39 percent of
potential participants did not take the survey, and
some who participated (11 percent) did not complete all items. There may be important differences
between these groups. Information regarding the
amount of actual time participants spent with the
traumatically bereaved was not obtained. There may
be differences between those who work full-time
with this population and those who spend fewer
hours engaged with this group. The majority of
respondents held other jobs in addition to their
involvement with this agency, with only 7.3
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40
Social Work
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