Development of the Shared Trauma Assessment Tool (STAT)

Overview: Shared trauma is experienced when a clinician is doubly-exposed to a traumatic event(s) as a community member and clinician. This phenomenon is ubiquitous in today’s crises, yet few accurate assessment tools are available. The Shared Trauma Assessment Tool (STAT) was developed to measure clinicians’ self-assessment of shared trauma.Proposal text: Social workers provide the majority of mental health care in the US. However, what happens when the social worker you are working with to help with a mental health issue resulting from a traumatic or stressful event is also struggling to manage their own reactions to the crises? When a clinician has experienced a ‘double exposure’ to a collective traumatic event, first as a member of the affected community, and second as a clinician providing treatment to members of the affected community, this phenomenon is called ‘shared trauma,’ and can have significant adverse effects for the clinician experiencing this double exposure (Baum, 2010; Tosone et al., 2012).

Although this concept has been explored and established in the literature, the available tools (Baum, 2013; Tosone et al., 2016) do not adequately measure the subjective experiences of shared trauma nor its functional consequences. In order for practitioners to provide optimal care for their clients, it is critical that practitioners have reliable and valid assessment tools that capture the complexity of this phenomenon.

To address this gap, the researchers developed the Shared Trauma Assessment Tool “STAT,” a self-assessment tool measuring clinician's subjective experiences of shared trauma and any adverse effects of this experience.The STAT was developed following Boateng and colleagues’ (2018) summary of instrument design. First, researchers reviewed the literature and, using this information, interviewed experts on shared trauma to identify relevant constructs that comprise shared trauma. This process yielded four domains: (1) personal experiences, (2) professional experiences, (3) media exposure, and (4) support and coping. Items were then developed to assess respondent experiences of identified domains. Next, these items were examined for their content validity through cognitive interviews and feedback from expert judges. This process yielded 23 items covering the four identified domains. This version of the STAT was pilot tested by 54 MSW students from a Mid-Atlantic city who were placed in field internships during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.

Psychometric analyses were conducted from this pilot testing, including examining its reliability by calculating the Cronbach’s alpha for each domain: Personal .82, Professional .80, Media .72, and Support and Coping .55. The presentation will include additional analyses of reliability, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses aimed at establishing construct validity.

The goals of this presentation are to:
1. Define, clarify, and describe the construct of shared trauma.
2. Identify the importance of assessing for shared trauma among clinicians and the potential risks of assessing incorrectly or not at all.
3. Introduce and describe the development of the STAT.
4. Present the findings of the analyses aimed at evaluating the psychometric properties of the STAT.
5. Identify future directions for research and application in clinical settings.