Date of Graduation

12-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Counselor Education (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders

Advisor/Mentor

Farley, Roy C.

Committee Member

Kissinger, Daniel B.

Second Committee Member

Lo, Wen-Juo

Third Committee Member

Mink, Edward

Keywords

College Student; Counseling; Veteran; Wellness

Abstract

Afghanistan and Iraq war student-veterans have increased in population on college campuses in the United States (U.S.) as a result of using the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Healthy Campus 2020 (American College Health Association, 2012) highlighted the importance of college student wellbeing, health promotion and disease prevention, while the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs has called for an approach to services that is strength based (United States Department of Veteran Affairs, 2008). To date, however, wellness studies conducted on Iraq and Afghanistan student-veterans using an evidenced-based model of holistic wellness have not been conducted. This study was designed to address this gap in the literature.

An expo facto study was used in this research. This study received 143 respondents from 17 of the top 30 four-year universities in the U.S. with the greatest number of participants using the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Participants completed several forms on-line to collect data, including a demographics questionnaire and the Five Factor Wellness Inventory (5F-Wel) as the measure of holistic wellness. This study sought to investigate differences among student-veterans in terms of gender, deployment, tours of duty and holistic wellness levels. Out of the 143 student-veterans 132 were included for statistical analysis. This study used a series of two-way ANOVAs that resulted in a significant main gender effect on the Essential Self. Female student-veterans had a significantly higher mean score than male student-veterans, however there was a small to medium effect size.

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