How we recognize and respond to signs of trauma in research

This blog post is the fourth in our series about trauma-informed research tactics. To read more about this topic, and why we’re talking about it, go to our first post on co-designing with research participants.

So you want to take a trauma-informed approach to user research? The first and most important step is to think about what the research process is like for participants. This should be the top priority as you plan your research guide with your other goals in mind.

You’ll also need to recognize and respond to trauma responses to try to minimize the chance that participants experience harm. In this post, we’ll talk about what trauma-informed research has looked like in some of our past work and what responses we look out for.

Ask good questions

Researchers at Bloom Works have worked extensively with child welfare agencies around the country. We’ve researched the impact of existing structures and helped influence policy decisions to better support foster kids and their caregivers. In late 2023, we started a project to better understand queer kids’ experiences in foster care. We wanted to develop more supportive and affirming foster families for queer kids. The research included sessions with queer foster youth.

Before these sessions, we wrote a moderator’s guide to serve our goal. The goal of this moderator guide was to learn from their lived experiences as queer youth. But we balanced this goal against our commitment to trauma-informed methods. We knew we needed to lower the chance that our sessions might cause harm to our participants.

Many queer kids come into foster care because their family rejects them. Knowing this, we decided not to ask our participants perhaps the most common opening question: what brought you into foster care? It was also not relevant to our research goal, which was to develop more affirming foster families. So instead, we focused on asking about affirming experiences. We asked queer youth to think of times when they felt safe and supported. We asked them to think of ways caregivers had affirmed their queer identity. We asked them to share what caregivers had done to help them feel that way.

It worked! After the project we got feedback from one youth. They said, “It was one of the most trauma-informed interviews I’ve ever had! They didn’t ask all these questions about all the awful stuff from the past. I was impressed!” Their reaction was very validating. It showed how important trauma-informed approaches are. But it was also a sad sign of how rare they are.

Watch for responses

Trauma responses vary a lot. For some people, reflecting on past harm may bring up sadness or prompt crying. For others, this might lead to feelings of impatience or agitation. They might fidget, shake a leg, or tap their fingers. For some people talking about past harm makes them feel shame. They might blush, talk fast, use run-on sentences. They might have surprising outbursts, or feel shut-down and go silent. Some people might not be aware of their feelings. But their physical signs will often be a good tip-off. They might suddenly get a headache, feel dizzy, or their throat might close up.

When something like this happens in a research session, we respond first with curiosity. We can’t always know for sure what causes these reactions. But we can notice them and respond without judgment. We’re careful not to interject our own perspective on a participant’s experience. We don’t ignore the response either. If participants do share specific details about past harm, we validate and honor them. We might say, “That sounds horrible. I’m sad that happened to you.” We then create opportunities for participants to exercise agency and access coping mechanisms.

Here’s what this looked like in our past work. In one project, we held sessions with foster families to better understand treatment foster care. Treatment foster care, also sometimes known as therapeutic foster care, is a specialized foster care that is made for children and youth with higher behavioral, emotional, or medical needs. These foster families had cared for kids with the highest needs.

One participant seemed excited to share her experiences at first. But as we got into our questions, she found she had trouble speaking. Her voice cracked. She needed to clear their throat over and over. Noticing this reaction, we offered to take a break. We encouraged the participant to get a drink of water. We took the pressure off her by removing the focus on their answers to our questions. We changed the subject, and shared about ourselves. We talked about our preferred home remedies for sore throats.

These shifts gave the caregiver a chance to take a break from the interview and her trauma response. We took more time to build rapport and increase trust by sharing about ourselves. And this paid off later when the caregiver shared about experiences of past trauma. By that time she was calm and able to speak. We did not change the subject. Matching the caregiver’s state, we honored the past harm by saying, “you have dealt with a lot of difficulty in your time as a caregiver.” It was a tearful moment of connection.

Remember what matters

Trauma-informed approaches to research may affect our ability to meet our research goals. We may shift away from focusing on harm. We may have to disrupt sessions, “waste time” by sharing about ourselves, or offer to take breaks. But these approaches are responsive to the participant and their past experiences of harm. And they are the ethical things to do. We hope that our research sessions might even allow participants to access a small amount of healing. And that is what matters.