Masculinity, hardiness, and psychological well-being in male student veterans
Abstract
American colleges are experiencing a surge of veterans and active-duty students who attend school at least part time. Little research exists on positive characteristics which facilitate their academic attainment. This study seeks to understand how conformity to traditional masculine norms and psychological hardiness affect the psychological well being of male student-veterans in higher education. One-hundred and seventeen college-attending veterans and active-duty service members completed an Internet survey including the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory, Psychological Well-Being Scales, and the Dispositional Resilience Scale-30. Conformity to masculine norms was found to be negatively associated with psychological well being, but hardiness fully mediated the relation between masculinity and psychological well being. Implications for research and practice with male student-veterans were addressed. These included doing more outreach to student veterans, facilitating their transition from the military to college, consulting with current student-veterans and military transition specialists, and developing specific programs to recruit and retain of student-veterans.
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
OpenAccess.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.