College Student, Veteran Writers’ Interest in Discussing COVID-19 Pandemic Stressors and Related Political Topics

Abstract

This exploratory case study investigated college student veterans’ pre-pandemic
versus pandemic types and levels of stress linked to their individual/family and
communal, health and social-relational contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic
and how this orientation impacted their potential interest in communicating about
the pandemic and related political, controversial topics in classrooms with a
substantial discussion- and writing-assignment course design. The study focused
on student veterans, who were compared with their nonveteran peers. From a U.S.
university with a socioeconomically depressed, rural population, 78 college
students, 39 veterans and 39 nonveterans, participated. The authors applied a
mixed-methods design approach and convergent-parallel strategy reliant on data
collection and analysis by utilizing Likert scale and short-answer survey questions,
NVivo coding, and SPSS statistical software. As findings, during the pandemic,
both the veterans and nonveterans reported high and often similar stress levels of
up to 41% for five factors connected to their individual/family and communal,
health and social-relational contexts, which negatively impacted their college
educational paths. During the pandemic, veterans showed the highest stress rates
for three factors: anxiety about 1) a community/national political issue(s)
connected to their communal, health and social-relational contexts and, tied for
second place, 2) an injury/illness of a family member(s) affecting veterans’
individual/family health and 3) a community/national issue(s) related to the
COVID-19 pandemic as again linked to veterans’ communal, health and socialrelational statuses. Meanwhile, the nonveterans’ top stressor concerned a personal
socializing issue associated with their individual/family, social-relational
background.