A difficult determination IRBs face is to assess the degree of risk posed by research to individuals and society, and whether the potential for individual harm is balanced by potential benefits to the individual and to the field. In trauma research, a frequent question is whether asking participants to report experiences of trauma is distressful, particularly to the extent that doing so impairs well being. A less often asked but equally important question is whether disclosing experiences in a research environment is beneficial to participants. The objective of this proposal is to evaluate immediate and short-term impact of exposure to trauma research on well being, defined as the absence of distress (e.g., posttraumatic stress symptoms, other anxiety symptoms, negative affect) and the presence of positive emotions (e.g. positive affect), as well as and benefits from participation (e.g. gains in insight about event, reduction of feeling stigmatized). We plan to examine these factors by using a combination of experimental and quasi-experimental designs. We will compare well being and benefits of participation at three time points across six experimental conditions defined by sets of questions about life events. Conditions will vary according to whether they ask about events that are generally considered stressful, stigmatizing, traumatic, or that entail sexual experience. Specifically, we aim to investigate the main effect of exposure to question type on well being and perception of benefits from participating across time. We plan to test moderating effects of whether participants who have experienced events report more distress, but also more benefits, and to evaluate whether psychophysiological assessment of emotion detects impacts not apparent through self-report methods. The study consist of 2 parts. In Study 1, 330 participants will be recruited through a web-based research participation management system over the course of four semesters. Participants will be randomly assigned to experimental conditions using block randomization. Data will be collected once prior to exposure (baseline) and three times following exposure (immediately after and at 24 hours and 2 weeks later). In Study 2, one hundred participants, will be recruited. In contrast to Study 1, these participants will participate only once. In a comfortable laboratory room we will record psychophysiological measures (i.e., facial EMG from the cheek and brow, heart rate, and skin conductance) while participants are exposed to the experimental conditions. To assess these aims regression and analysis of variance will be used. This study will provide a foundation for future research on the benefits and risks of trauma research.
The current study is relevant to the field of public health by contributing to the development of systematic knowledge that can inform decisions about the risk-benefit ratio in studies about trauma. Systematic research on this topic helps researchers make informed decisions about their studies so that research does not threaten mental health or compound existing problems and will help participants make fully informed decisions to participate in trauma research. We expect that this study's findings will provoke other researchers to develop similarly important questions about the impact of research on participants. ? ? ?
| Cook, Sarah L; Swartout, Kevin M; Goodnight, Bradley L et al. (2015) Impact of violence research on participants over time: Helpful, harmful, or neither? Psychol Violence 5:314-324 |
