A qualitative, test-replicate approach to understanding trauma in late adolescence and early emerging adulthood

To evaluate how racially diverse, late-adolescent/early emerging adult college students in the American Southeast would describe past-year traumatic events.

In Study 1, 165 first-year students provided an open-ended response describing their past-year traumatic experiences (78.8% Black, Indigenous, or Other People of Color, 49.7% women, M_age = 19.1 years, 19.4% lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questionning). Deductive and inductive thematic analysis was used to categorize responses (all cases were team- or dyad-coded with excellent agreement). Thematic analysis on a second independent study of mostly third-year students (N = 98, 67.3% Black, Indigenous, or Other People of Color, 50.0% women, M_age = 21.1 years, 11.2% lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questionning) emphasized descriptive consistency of themes.

Twenty-six codes were generated under an umbrella that included direct trauma (n = 13), indirect trauma (i.e., experienced through someone close, n = 3), or collective trauma (i.e., experienced through the larger community, n = 10). In both studies, the most common experiences were in reference to collective trauma (49.1%-52.0%), especially exposure to school/mass shootings (22.4% in Study 1) and other international traumatic events (e.g., Israel-Hamas/Gaza war; 16.3% in Study 2). Students often reported learning about national/international traumatic events via social media. Direct and indirect trauma, especially death or illness/injury of a loved one, were also relevant.

Multiple forms of direct and indirect trauma are relevant to late adolescent/early emerging adults in college, though collective trauma may be especially meaningful. Further research is needed to understand its relevance to increasingly common internalizing symptoms among young people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).