Cultural taxation refers to the extra responsibilities (e.g., increased service expectations, serving as unofficial diversity consultants) placed on members of marginalized racial groups within academia. However, the extant literature on cultural taxation does not clearly indicate the extent to which that research applies to graduate students as members of academia who often fulfill similar tasks and roles as faculty. Furthermore, the academic context of a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) is particularly relevant to this line of work as this designation, while projecting an image that an institution is inclusive, is not directly representative of the institution’s commitment to equitable practices. The goal of the present research is to identify how Latinx graduate students are potentially taxed and whether their experiences of cultural taxation are analogous to the taxation that faculty experience. Transcripts from 20 interviews with Latinx students at an HSI were analyzed via qualitative thematic analysis to identify potential themes of this sample’s experiences with cultural taxation. Findings suggest that Latinx graduate students’ cultural taxation converge in some ways with faculty patterns, but with key exceptions. Major themes from students’ responses include a sense of increased distance and lack of support from one’s home department, as well as difficulties integrating diversity and inclusion work cleanly into their graduate careers. These findings supplement existing cultural taxation literature by highlighting the experiences of an underrecognized population within academia and presenting initial findings for taxations imposed on this group. Keywords: cultural taxation, graduate students, Latinx students, identity taxation, thematic analysis
Introduction Trauma-exposed individuals are at risk of developing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which has been linked to both sleep disturbances and sleep-related daytime impairment. A growing body of literature suggests affective processes, such as negative and positive emotion regulation, may influence associations between PTSD and sleep. Therefore, our study aimed to examine if there was a direct effect of negative and positive emotion dysregulation on sleep disturbances and sleep-related impairment above the influence of PTSD symptoms. Methods Participants were 460 trauma-exposed college students (69.8% female; 62.0% White; Mage = 20.13 ± 2.94) recruited from the University of North Texas. Trauma exposure was assessed with the Life Events Checklist for DSM-5. Participants completed demographic questionnaires, the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (excluding sleep-related questions), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-16), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation – Positive (DERS-P), the PROMIS Sleep Disturbance (PROMIS-SD), and Sleep-Related Impairment (PROMIS-SRI) Short Forms. Multiple regression models with robust standard errors were conducted to examine associations between both positive and negative emotion dysregulation on sleep disturbances and sleep-related impairment, covarying for PTSD symptoms, age, gender, race, and ethnicity. Results Greater negative emotion dysregulation was associated with greater sleep disturbances (b = 0.06, SE = 0.03, p = .015, ηp2 = 0.01) above the influence of positive emotion dysregulation, PTSD symptoms, age, gender, race, and ethnicity (R2 = 0.28). Greater negative emotion dysregulation was also associated with greater sleep-related impairments (b = 0.20, SE = 0.03, p < .001, ηp2 = 0.08) above the influence of the same covariates (R2 = 0.31). Positive emotion dysregulation was not associated with sleep disturbances or sleep-related impairments. Conclusion Results suggest that more difficulty regulating negative emotions is linked to disturbed sleep among trauma-exposed individuals. Additional experimental work is needed to understand if regulating negative emotions via cognitive-behavioral strategies (e.g., mindfulness, cognitive restructuring) can lead to downstream improvements in sleep. Support (if any)
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