154 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 2 Instrumentation In addition to a demographic questionnaire, we used instruments with strong psychometrics to measure ACEs, compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Questionnaire Felitti et al. (1998) developed the ACEs Questionnaire to identify instances of abuse and neglect in childhood. The 10-item questionnaire has good test–retest reliability (Dube et al., 2004) and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .78 in one study (Ford et al., 2014) and .90 (Mei et al., 2022) in another. Its structural validity passed invariance tests across demographics, exceeding all thresholds (CFI = .986, TLI = .985, RMSEA = .021, SRMR = .066; Mei et al., 2022). Participants self-report instances of ACEs from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating higher risk for mental and physical ailments and prohibited quality of life. Serious risk is indicated by a score of 4 or higher (Dube et al., 2004). Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) Stamm (2010) created a 30-item questionnaire measuring compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress and reported Cronbach’s alpha scores of .88 for compassion satisfaction, .75 for burnout, and .81 for secondary traumatic stress. Heritage et al. (2018) found good item fit and invariance across demographics in demonstration of construct validity. The ProQOL subscales are described as being low (22 or less), moderate (23–41), or high (42 or higher). Positive feelings about helping ability (compassion satisfaction) are measured with scores of 22 or lower indicating problems. Exhaustion, frustration, and depression (burnout) are measured with scores 42 and higher showing impairment at work. Fear and trauma from work (secondary traumatic stress) are measured with scores 42 and higher indicating fear resulting from work. As a widely used instrument, recent researchers have offered several critiques, including a fourfactor structure with burnout as two latent subscales, traditional burnout and emotional well-being (Sprang & Craig, 2015), or interpreting compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction to be on opposite ends of one spectrum (Geoffrion et al., 2019). Fleckman et al. (2022) used the ProQOL in their sample of PK–12 teachers and did not achieve a sufficient model fit; therefore, they posited that the ProQOL may be more appropriate for human service and mental health professionals compared to educators. Because PSCs are mental health professionals working in education settings, we used the instrument as it was originally designed with the three separate constructs of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Procedure Our Institutional Review Board approved the current study. Purposeful sample methods included use of a purchased data set of 6,000 counselors’ emails as well as postings on Facebook groups for PSCs. All potential participants received an informed consent document and a Qualtrics link to the three instruments and demographic questionnaire. After data cleaning (i.e., removal of cases with incomplete responses on the instruments) produced 240 usable cases, we computed scores from the instruments and checked assumptions for multiple regression using SPSS 28. Reliability for each instrument showed Cronbach’s alpha score of .86 and an omega score of .87 for the ACEs Questionnaire and .81 Cronbach’s alpha and .82 omega scores for the ProQOL. Data Analysis and Results RQ 1 asked for mean scores of ACEs, compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. We calculated a mean ACEs score of 3.68, 95% CI [3.2854, 4.0330] for PSCs, lower than the threshold of 4 and thus just below the range for significant risk. However, 50.42% of participants
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