The Poor/Working-Class College Students’ Challenges and Resiliency Factors Scale

Rebecca Reed

Social class encompasses the preferences, lifestyles, and behaviors of people in various social class groups in conjunction with the structural privileges that accompany certain social locations (Smith, 2010). Class-privileged college students typically come to campus with greater amounts of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1980) that afford them the luxury of understanding how to navigate the middle-class environment of college (Tett, 2000). Students from poor/working- class backgrounds are, on the other hand, often without the benefit of knowing the behavioral codes and expectations of college, which can lead to negative psychological outcomes in the form of lowered self-esteem, depression, and stress. As a construct, resiliency provides a framework for understanding how some poor/working-class students are able to succeed despite these potential negative outcomes and persist through...