“I Am Never Enough”: Factors Contributing to Secondary Traumatic Stress and Burnout among Black Student Services Professionals in Higher Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for submitting this manuscript and giving me the opportunity to review such an interesting piece of work. The challenges faced by those from culturally diverse backgrounds are ongoing and significant and the fact that this is grounded within another highly impacted sector, higher education, makes the work very timely and relevant.  There are some very strong discussions of the pertinent theory and practical/applied background and the results are well presented and discussed.  I found the paper a real pleasure to read and felt that there was a very strong narrative argument which connected all of the sections. 

The use of the SSTS approach was novel and gave the paper real strength.  However I felt that the authors could usefully extend the discussion of  "what was distinct about this" compared to other qualitative perspectives and therefore what this choice of approach added.  I would also like to see greater detail on the authors' own positioning within the topic.  I am aware that reflexivity is not required in all qualitative approaches but given the importance of representing participant voice, I feel that some further discussion of positioning would be helpful.  This is especially important given that the authors acknowledge they produced separate positionality statements. There were some excellent discussions of setting and participants which gave the paper real richness and the process of establishing rigour overall is well described.  However I felt that the positioning itself should have been more explicit.  This could however be a brief section.  

Related to this, although most of the work was constructed to reflect the "mediated" nature of qualitative approaches (i.e. that this reflects participants' constructed reality rather than an independently objective version of reality), there were places where this slipped and implicit quantitative phrasing appeared.  For example when discussing the conceptual framework in line 140, this suggested an objective "relationship" - something which could not be elicited from a qualitative study.  Similarly line 254 talks about contributing factors to burnout...when there is no way of establishing this from the current data.  And single quotes are taken to represent wider consensus in places - e.g. when discussing the toxicity of work environments.  It can sometimes be difficult to do this when a large quantitative data set is available as finding a consensus picture can often become a more pressing concern.  Further it may be that some of this is due to the previous publication of the quantitative data and the difficulty of separating out what is "known" from that rather than "heard" from here.  However I felt that the manuscript needed to be revisited with a more "critical" eye when discussing wider consensus and trends.  I do not think this is a big undertaking, this could be easily accomplished if the authors have now had some distance from the finished version.  

Overall, as previously mentioned, I thought this paper had a number of significant strengths.  By making the strengths of the method and the positionality clearer...and then reviewing some of the wording as above, I believe this manuscript would make an important and timely contribution to the debate.  

Author Response

Thank you for your positive evaluation of our work! We aim to address each of your suggested edits below:

1. The use of the SSTS approach was novel and gave the paper real strength.  However I felt that the authors could usefully extend the discussion of "what was distinct about this" compared to other qualitative perspectives and therefore what this choice of approach added.  I would also like to see greater detail on the authors' own positioning within the topic.  I am aware that reflexivity is not required in all qualitative approaches but given the importance of representing participant voice, I feel that some further discussion of positioning would be helpful.  This is especially important given that the authors acknowledge they produced separate positionality statements. There were some excellent discussions of setting and participants which gave the paper real richness and the process of establishing rigour overall is well described.  However I felt that the positioning itself should have been more explicit.  This could however be a brief section.  
   1. We rewrote the section on STSS to make it more clear, and to highlight what is unique about this method. We have incorporated a collective positionality statement at the beginning of the Methods section (Section 2.1) that encompasses our identities and lived experiences relevant to the project.
2. Related to this, although most of the work was constructed to reflect the "mediated" nature of qualitative approaches (i.e. that this reflects participants' constructed reality rather than an independently objective version of reality), there were places where this slipped and implicit quantitative phrasing appeared.  For example when discussing the conceptual framework in line 140, this suggested an objective "relationship" - something which could not be elicited from a qualitative study.  Similarly line 254 talks about contributing factors to burnout...when there is no way of establishing this from the current data.  And single quotes are taken to represent wider consensus in places - e.g. when discussing the toxicity of work environments.  It can sometimes be difficult to do this when a large quantitative data set is available as finding a consensus picture can often become a more pressing concern.  Further it may be that some of this is due to the previous publication of the quantitative data and the difficulty of separating out what is "known" from that rather than "heard" from here.  However I felt that the manuscript needed to be revisited with a more "critical" eye when discussing wider consensus and trends.  I do not think this is a big undertaking, this could be easily accomplished if the authors have now had some distance from the finished version.  
   1. In the final paragraph of the introduction, we have changed the language so as to focus on exploration of lived experience, rather than implying a relationship
   2. In our results and figure, we have clarified that these factors are consistent with research identifying potential contributing factors to STS or burnout. We also changed our categories under role challenges (including in the diagram) to reflect this.
   3. In our results and discussion, we have modified our interpretation of quotes so that they do not imply consensus among respondents

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a well-designed analysis and very readable paper on a timely and interesting topic. The qualitative methods are well described, and the findings are presented in a way that is both conceptually strong/interesting and has clear implications for practice. There are a few minor points in the methods and presentation of findings that I think require clarification before publication, just to help the reader stay on track, as well as some suggested edits/questions that the authors may wish to consider. 

Edits required:

- As written, the description of the sample and participation raises questions. In the "Methods" at line 171, the authors state: "overall, a total of 35 participants (out of 559 originally sampled) were eligible to participate." Does this mean that the initial search of websites for faculty and staff yielded 559 individuals who then were invited to complete the survey, or that 559 people completed the survey? Does it mean that 35 respondents in the data set met the inclusion criteria for this analysis? The phrase "eligible to participate" puts the reader in mind of who took the survey, not who has their data included in the analysis here. It would be clearer to state how many people were invited to complete the survey, how many completed it, and of those how many met the inclusion criteria for this analysis.

- Early on the paper uses the phrase "Black professionals"  seemingly interchangeably with "Black faculty and staff;" by the discussion section, the paper uses the phrase "Black student service professionals." It would be helpful to define the differences (if any) in what these terms mean and how the paper uses them.

- Lines 402-404 and 411 introduce quotes from respondents and seemingly new points, which would therefore fit better in the "results" as new statements. The discussion in general could do a little less recapping of the findings and a little more discussion of the meaning of the results in the social context of higher education in 2020, but overall the discussion section is well-written and engages with existing literature. 

- Line 429 has a sentence that is truncated, and it looks like it might be an important one.

- Line 475 asserts "high turnover" among Black professionals - how do Black and non-Black respondents to the survey compare in terms of length of time in their position? Related to this, the authors might wish to amend Table 1 to include overall survey respondent averages, which would lend nuance to thinking about points like this one. It looks like the citations support the idea that Black turnover in general is often high - but maybe turnover is just high in increasingly precarious higher education employment, i.e. an intersection of racialized stress and the increasing capitalist logics of higher ed (this relates to the point above about placing the findings in a bit more societal context in the discussion, where possible).  

- Line 522: "They pointed to the pain of watching campuses celebrate surviving the pandemic, whilst feeling as if they have had to absorb the hidden toll." The context is confusing here - given that data were collected in the very first months of the pandemic, how were respondents able to reflect on surviving the pandemic at that time point?

 

Edits to consider:

- Given the focus on Black professionals, it would also be helpful to know if there were survey respondents who were Black but who did not meet other inclusion criteria and so had their data excluded from analysis.  Is it known, for example, how many survey participants identified as Black but did not answer at least one open ended question (and thus are not represented in the qualitative analysis here) - knowing this would help avoid the possibly-inaccurate assumption that readers are going to make that approximately 6% of your survey respondents overall were Black (which is a little bit under-represented of the general employee population, according to the authors' cited sources). It might also be interesting from the point of considering whether Black participants responded to open ended questions at a higher or lower rate than others, and whether this might be seen as a marker of "survey fatigue" among minoritized employees for whom the survey could be either an opportunity to be heard or one more instance where they carry the burden of reporting the troubles faced by themselves and "their" students, potentially without any action in response (none of this can be known from your data, just things to think about). 

- It is a nice methods development that the authors describe the use of positionality statements as part of the methods. It might be helpful to briefly say anything relevant about the authors' positionalities and the impact on the analysis. For example, are any of the authors themselves past or present Black higher education professionals, and if so how did this enrich or change the analysis? 

- The authors do not need to justify centering analysis on Black respondents; it is a strength that the paper considers the experiences of Black professionals to be worth examination on their own merits, and not framing the findings in terms of disparities or differences by race. With that said, it might enrich the discussion section for the authors to offer their thoughts on what aspects of the challenges respondents faced are most directly shaped by racialized experiences, and where is the common ground across employees facing stresses of not enough time or being in structurally challenging positions (as the quote about "listen[ing] to those who have to have energy on both sides suggests, to me anyway - I read it with my own assumptions as being about folks structurally positioned as "serving" students while also trying to serve the university's needs and stay within budget).And where might serving the needs of Black professionals also create better working conditions for all employees (following possibly the lineage/inspiration of Black feminists like the Cohambee River Collective who have argued that the liberation of Black women results in the liberation of all).  This is just a suggestion.

Author Response

Thank you for your positive evaluation of our work! We aim to address each of your suggested edits below:

Edits Required:

1. As written, the description of the sample and participation raises questions. In the "Methods" at line 171, the authors state: "overall, a total of 35 participants (out of 559 originally sampled) were eligible to participate." Does this mean that the initial search of websites for faculty and staff yielded 559 individuals who then were invited to complete the survey, or that 559 people completed the survey? Does it mean that 35 respondents in the data set met the inclusion criteria for this analysis? The phrase "eligible to participate" puts the reader in mind of who took the survey, not who has their data included in the analysis here. It would be clearer to state how many people were invited to complete the survey, how many completed it, and of those how many met the inclusion criteria for this analysis.
   1. We have modified Section 2.4 Recruitment to clarify each of these suggested points: how many were invited to complete the original survey, how many completed it, and of those, how many met the inclusion criteria for the analysis
2. Early on the paper uses the phrase "Black professionals" seemingly interchangeably with "Black faculty and staff;" by the discussion section, the paper uses the phrase "Black student service professionals." It would be helpful to define the differences (if any) in what these terms mean and how the paper uses them.
   1. We have chosen to use “Black student service professionals” consistently throughout, as whether staff or faculty, the identifying role is that they must be in a primary role of providing non-instructional support to students (for example, counseling faculty would fall under this designation).
3. Lines 402-404 and 411 introduce quotes from respondents and seemingly new points, which would therefore fit better in the "results" as new statements. The discussion in general could do a little less recapping of the findings and a little more discussion of the meaning of the results in the social context of higher education in 2020, but overall the discussion section is well-written and engages with existing literature. 
   1. Throughout the discussion, quotes were taken from the results have been removed so that they do not appear as new. We now paraphrase them instead.
   2. In section 4.6 Future directions, we now discuss the meaning of our results in the context of 2020.
4. Line 429 has a sentence that is truncated, and it looks like it might be an important one.
   1. This was an error and has been removed
5. Line 475 asserts "high turnover" among Black professionals - how do Black and non-Black respondents to the survey compare in terms of length of time in their position? Related to this, the authors might wish to amend Table 1 to include overall survey respondent averages, which would lend nuance to thinking about points like this one. It looks like the citations support the idea that Black turnover in general is often high - but maybe turnover is just high in increasingly precarious higher education employment, i.e. an intersection of racialized stress and the increasing capitalist logics of higher ed (this relates to the point above about placing the findings in a bit more societal context in the discussion, where possible).  
   1. We have amended Table 1 to include overall survey respondent averages for the full sample from our original study. We clarify that turnover is higher among Black staff, and have now addressed this in the results and discussion
6. Line 522: "They pointed to the pain of watching campuses celebrate surviving the pandemic, whilst feeling as if they have had to absorb the hidden toll." The context is confusing here - given that data were collected in the very first months of the pandemic, how were respondents able to reflect on surviving the pandemic at that time point
   1. We have clarified in Section 4.6 Future Directions that this speaks to the results of a separate study conducted by Cho and Brassfield, done after the onset of the pandemic. This was featured in attempts to bring our data into conversation with more recent shifts in higher education.

 

Edits to consider:

1. Given the focus on Black professionals, it would also be helpful to know if there were survey respondents who were Black but who did not meet other inclusion criteria and so had their data excluded from analysis.  Is it known, for example, how many survey participants identified as Black but did not answer at least one open ended question (and thus are not represented in the qualitative analysis here) - knowing this would help avoid the possibly-inaccurate assumption that readers are going to make that approximately 6% of your survey respondents overall were Black (which is a little bit under-represented of the general employee population, according to the authors' cited sources). It might also be interesting from the point of considering whether Black participants responded to open ended questions at a higher or lower rate than others, and whether this might be seen as a marker of "survey fatigue" among minoritized employees for whom the survey could be either an opportunity to be heard or one more instance where they carry the burden of reporting the troubles faced by themselves and "their" students, potentially without any action in response (none of this can be known from your data, just things to think about). 
   1. We have now clarified in Section 2.4 Recruitment that all participants who identified as Black answered at least one open ended question. Thank you for this excellent point!
2. It is a nice methods development that the authors describe the use of positionality statements as part of the methods. It might be helpful to briefly say anything relevant about the authors' positionalities and the impact on the analysis. For example, are any of the authors themselves past or present Black higher education professionals, and if so how did this enrich or change the analysis? 
   2. We have now created section 2.1 Positionality Statement covering all authors, to illuminate the stories of our own lived experiences as well as those we have held or witnessed of our peers, and how they informed our approach to this study.
3. The authors do not need to justify centering analysis on Black respondents; it is a strength that the paper considers the experiences of Black professionals to be worth examination on their own merits, and not framing the findings in terms of disparities or differences by race. With that said, it might enrich the discussion section for the authors to offer their thoughts on what aspects of the challenges respondents faced are most directly shaped by racialized experiences, and where is the common ground across employees facing stresses of not enough time or being in structurally challenging positions (as the quote about "listen[ing] to those who have to have energy on both sides suggests, to me anyway - I read it with my own assumptions as being about folks structurally positioned as "serving" students while also trying to serve the university's needs and stay within budget).And where might serving the needs of Black professionals also create better working conditions for all employees (following possibly the lineage/inspiration of Black feminists like the Cohambee River Collective who have argued that the liberation of Black women results in the liberation of all).  This is just a suggestion.
   1. Thank you for this! We have reshaped our decision as a strength.
   2. In 4.4 Implications for Practice: we have introduced a discussion of phenomena that were shaped by racialized experiences, distinct from those common to the role.
   3. We have incorporated perspectives from Black womanists, the Cohambee River Collective, and the Okanagan Charter which focuses on campus cultures that promote health.
      
        

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing all of the comments in such a positive and constructive way.  The positionality section is really strong and gives added depth and authenticity to the study itself.  Good luck with your future research!

Author Response

Thank you, we appreciated your encouragement and insights!

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for this opportunity to re-review this interesting work. The authors' have responded thoughtfully and thoroughly to suggestions raised by reviewers. There are a couple places where the wording of revisions could still be made more clear, but these minor stylistic issues are not worth holding up the publication or requesting further review (though the authors may just want to give a really close read to their proofs for minor word edits). Overall the revised text adds helpful additional detail and analysis, making an already strong paper even stronger.

Not as a reviewer, but as a person: sincere condolences to the authors on the loss of their colleague and friend, which is referenced in the introductory discussion of positionality. We don't do research for abstract reasons, we do it because it matters to us;  I appreciate the authors in sharing with their readers a glimpse of how deeply this work impacts them.  In so doing, they practice that very humanizing of academia that their paper calls for. 

Author Response

Thank you for your thoughtful, kind and supportive words. I will share them with our research team, and we will take a closer look at how we may improve clarity.