Day 2- Learnings from Applying Trauma Informed Principles to the Research Processes

1. Welcome to trauma informed research panel

• Principal Qualitative Researcher for Code for America for Blind for Repaired and Pronouns for He/They

• Qualitative user researcher at UC Berkley

• Founder of Social Workers who Design, which aims to leverage social work in design practices

• Independent user researcher and partner at HmntyCntrd, where she consults companies on ethics and equity

1. We’ve learned that no one in any setting is free from trauma, and it has come up throughout all the talks in the conference so far.

2. I want to see how we apply trauma informed methods to anything and everything you do. Want to acknowledge that discussions of trauma will bring up feelings, sometimes overwhelming

   –  So I encourage people to participate in panel in way that’s best for them

3. Any references will be included in the conference guide

4. The panel has people who bring different perspectives to trauma, and we will all bring our own perspective

1. Rachel, can you ground us with definition of trauma and trauma informed?

 

• Won’t go into extreme detail or specific traumatic events, and will keep it at the 15,000 feet level

• Use of people seeking out meaning of the word has increased exponentially
• Awareness of trauma over past 4-5 decades has increased as well

 

 

• Trauma is a large planet in the solar system of care that we need to address ourselves, and in our practice

• Combination of their studies, trauma is due to a wide-ranging impacts of responding to things too much, too fast, too soon, too long
• And in medical circles, trauma comes from lack of protection and support in these intense events

• A lack of a system of comfort, reassurance, and stability is what makes trauma lasting in its effects

 

 

• Accounting for potential of research potential of participants for those we work with toe experience trauma
• This is present in all of our work as researchers, especially with work in social/racial justice issues

1. Safety
2. Trustworthiness and Transparency
3. Peer Support
4. Collaboration & Mutuality
5. Empowerment & Choice
6.  Integrating Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues

 

• One of things that we need to recognize is how questions can be weapon, and language in surveys, focus groups can be harmful
  • I have the example of the demographic section in a survey, where I force participants between binary choices “Male/Female” for gender
  • This forced disclosure of gender within man/woman systems
  • Exclusionary in that it doesn’t express people’s experiences, and type of language can be triggering
    • Forces participants to recall traumatic experience from the past
  • Participant blamed for not fitting into pre-existing categories of the researcher

• Safety and choice are key for data collection
  • I need to think about how can I remove harmful language from research material and allow as much participant autonomy as possible through choice.
    • Choice through question format, types of choice available, and ability to answer a question

• Language we use influences how people see themselves in research done
• Lot of trauma informed research has to do with harm-reduction
  • Harm is inevitably caused by doing research, when you are going into community you don’t know
  • Question becomes once you recognize it, what are ways you can reduce harm for individuals you are interacting with
• Principles of harm reduction come from working with folks that are in addiction and thinking of ways they are empowered to have choice in decisions that they make
  • Excluded populations have no choices by systems and structures, telling people what they are eligible for, and how to go about their daily lives
• How can we shift structure and give voice and choice to the research participant.
  • Think of compensation, and compensating research participants
  • Now question is what does compensation look like?
    • Not just giving $50, but is compensation culturally competent to lived experience, i.e. gift-card, cash, or childcare
    • Show-up for experience rather than saying what participants need

• Even something like a consent form i.e. are they readable or designed to protect the organization?
• Having worked in commercial research, there is way to balance that
  • But if  consent is solely one-sided, it’s  not a consent form
• To mitigate this, I work on sharing research scripts ahead of time with participants, and letting them take over the interview

 

• Can mean different things, and going to where client is and a place of comfort
• Meeting people where they are with most pressing need and design practice

• Virtually: Try to show hands, and be fully present and engaged with subject. This will convey some kind of connection that is made
  • For projects that are in-house, there are preconditions of care and communication building with subjects
  • Seeing someone dis-regulated or visible upset
    • People look off-camera and look visibly nervous and place hand on heart, get fidgety, or try to remove from conversation
    • Critical 90-second moment where you can drill in and take advantage of emotional response or back-up and give them breathing room
      • Examples of my research around racism

• What are scripts of refusal and knowledge of script

• Do we even need this research project?
• I often work with people who are over-researched, and are constantly asked to share traumatic stories, and have the risk of experiencing harm

 

• Even asking around a traumatic event creates pressure for subjects to disclose
  • Be clear about certain questions, and what we are or are not asking people to share
• How can we pull from existing research or thought to set ground work for next project we want to do?
• What we see from the user research field, is that we want to discover something new and something never shared before
  • This tendency can be harmful
• Harmful for research participant, as participant is asked to provide unwilling disclosures
• Comes from idea of research as colonial practice
  • Being explicit and intentional about the research
  • Don’t need to build next new thing, but need to grasp what we need to know to move the project forward and how we move forward with project participants

• Even though I’ve researched with prosecutors, judges, and  other system actors, I walked through a conference of formerly incarcerated women, and realized I was unequipped to this research safely
• CFA experimented with participatory research, to get people from community and allowed people to get ideas we couldn’t have gotten to
  • Building experience from their perspective

• One thing that stood out from participatory research was that we often times talk about building trust and rapport with research participants
  • Trust you have with friend and mom is greater than UXR and research participant
• Don’t have ability to move research participants to own communities
  • Let’s people ask what’s relevant to them
  • Let them feel safe in conversations
• Recognize trust to share that intimate conversation
  • Sharing research findings is very important
  • Put audio series for those living with convictions
    • Will share story in audio series, and will make sure subjects would have out at each moment, and choice to define how story is shared
    • Complete control over language to talk through their story

• Another component is how to be constantly flexible, rooted and grounded in things, while also being able to be present and responsive to what is happening. This comes with significant practice
  • There is value of a daily practice of doing any aspect of trauma-informed work

• We should focus on us as researchers, and interacting with ourselves and others in a trauma informed way
• As someone working with sensitive topics, and presenting work to stakeholders with those who don’t have training, and are reluctant to confront findings
• Put content warnings, and consenting to hearing these topics
• Pausing after difficult conversation to do body check-ins
• Doing debrief to see any emotions like shame or guilt
  • What are processes or protocols used to help think what you are listening to as well as emotions or bodily feelings that emerge?

 

• Able to compartmentalize things in the moment, and can be as focused as possible for those who need me to be stronger
• I personally can spill-over to let the experience of trauma I see build up too much
  • This can lead to zone of vicarious trauma and burn-out
• Elements of daily practice
• How do you integrate trauma-informed practices on a daily basis?
  • Used to make case of issues that are there
  • Seeing designers feel triggered and overwhelmed by nature of work itself like the pace expected, and how we do the work as researchers

• Having common practices that include getting team together in a low-stress environment to get people talk through feelings of doing the work
• Ties back to topic of building team resilience
• Always having two researchers with us,
  • Trauma-informed is something you need to apply to yourself not just others
  • Example of interview with Aditi, where I had a reaction to fact that person had not understood purpose of interview and having trouble handling it
    • Had to step out
    • Need to do pre-planning to prevent triaging things in the moment

 

 

• Nuanced conversation about self-care, and distinction between self-soothing to decompress from an interview
• Being able to leave a homework environment and interact with others afterward
  • Also think of self-care, in addition to self-soothing, as a way to properly metabolize what happened

• It’s important for organizations to recognize throwing money at a problem won’t solve it
• Organizational change will need to happen to do the job well

 

 

• Will have certain researchers experience burden of work more than others

• Truly trauma-informed research can identify how trauma can manifest differently and impact others

• A trauma informed team has protocols in place to prevent something like this from happening

• From intervening with a participant being racist
• Including proper digital hygiene to prevent stalking
• Need to consider intersection with different identities and positionalities

• Responsibility of org, not researchers and team to implement this

• Allow consent for participants and researchers and way to say no

 

• Whole context of the work was that they were anticipating that due to work Civilla was doing, they expected members of the team to potentially be exposed to traumatic stories and events, and being traumatized themselves or experiencing vicarious trauma

• Also brought in Detroit specific people

 

• Do the opposite of what Rachel suggested, and using superficial changes in org, without supporting people
• Idea of floating mental health-days, and stipend for therapist
  • Org will then not put in work of making access to resources easy
• Can also think about ways to think of nature of work

• Capitalism can be traumatizing, especially for those who have no power in the workplace
• Goal of thinking what it means to share power with workers, and giving people autonomy
  • Crafting spaces where people can show up as true selves
  • Can be hard to show-up and pretend to be a mask to someone else, and shifting to home life
• Crafting organizations that don’t make people do that
• Creating environments that were equitable and inclusive
• Environment you create in workplace changes how workers researcher show-up

 

• To be in relationship with others, you will cause harm
• Account for that at every level, and give people grace
  • Give yourself small steps, in trying to change things that are very big

 

 

1. How to take care of people, post-interview?

 

 

• A lot  can be done of bridge to next best person

• Otherwise you are violating their trust

 

2. How to frame screener questions to capture those with cognitive, sensory challenges?

 

 

 

• People are used to living through disability over period of time, versus someone who had it for a shorter period

3. What does trauma-informed hiring process for UXR look like?

• Even mentioning trauma-informed in job description would be a big plus
• Have only seen one from organization in Canada. It was most welcoming acknowledgment of how it was worded and phrased, and want to see more of it

• How are you crafting interview experience through interviewee?
• Trauma-informed hiring process, means nothing through organization. Need to do internal work to recognize it

4. Any researchers from existential definitions of trauma like emergency-room physicians?

 

• What she’s seen is that it’s hard people who are experiencing traumatic work-place situations, and no escape for people in healthcare
  • Institutional betrayal and lack of organizational support
  • Research done with hat

5. Where to learn more about topic after conference?

• HmntyCntrd Master Class to handle things

6. How to avoid over-incentivizing participants?

 

• If you have questions, ask the people you will be researching

• Don’t trust people’s own sense and autonomy and how are we valuing their insights and translating it to appropriate compensation
• Really about grasping what are community norms around research
• Trusting that people know what they need