Impact of violence research on participants over time: Helpful, harmful, or neither?

Abstract

Objective To investigate the impact of answering survey questions about experiences of stressful, stigmatizing, potentially traumatic and sexually violating events on well being, defined as reactions to research, anxiety, and positive and negative affect over two weeks. Method With an ethnically diverse sample of 559 higher education students, we employed a mixed experimental design (with between and within-subjects components) to evaluate changes in positive and negative affect, anxiety, traumatic stress symptoms, and reactions to research. We used multilevel regression models and planned contrasts to determine which, if any, specific characteristics of the survey questions caused changes in well being by comparing the effects of answering a randomly assigned set of survey questions about stressful, stigmatizing, potentially traumatic, or sexually violating life events across a two-week period. Results Controlling for baseline post-traumatic stress symptoms and levels of the outcome, we identified few statistically significant effects between conditions or across time. Significant effects included a small decrease in positive affect immediately after responding to questions about sexually violating events, which diminished at two weeks; these same participants perceived fewer drawbacks to research participation. Participants who responded to questions about stressful life events reported greater perceptions of benefits. Conclusions Our data support the safety of survey research on sexual assault or other stressful, stigmatizing, or potentially traumatic events.

Still Second Class

“…We limited our analyses in this report to graduate students. Although research on the sexual victimization of undergraduate women is currently burgeoning (e.g., Carey, Durney, Shepardson, & Carey, 2015;Cook, Swartout, Goodnight, Hipp, & Bellis, 2015;Orchowski & Gidycz, 2015;Warren, Swan, & Allen, 2015;Wigderson & Katz, 2015), research on the victimization of graduate students, male and female, is absent from recent studies. While undergraduates experience sexual harassment from both professors and other students, graduate students are in a potentially risky position for three reasons.…”

Predicting the Effects of Sexual Assault Research Participation: Reactions, Perceived Insight, and Help-Seeking

“…al., 2014), but can be mediated by severity of symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD (Massey & Widom, 2013). A more recent study showed that participants who were asked about sexual trauma had a slightly lower positive affect after two weeks compared to those who were only asked about stressful, but not traumatic, life events (Cook, Swartout, Goodnight, Hipp, & Bellis, 2015). Studies also find PTSD to be a unique predictor of negative reactions to participation (Edwards’s et.…”

Do Some Students Need Special Protection From Research on Sex and Trauma? New Evidence for Young Adult Resilience in “Sensitive Topics” Research

“…This concern is also reflected in a number of recently published articles in the popular media positing that college students are vulnerable and should be protected from controversial or evocative content (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2015; Freeman, Herrera, Hurley, King, Luciano, et al, 2014). Researchers studying sensitive topics have noted that they encounter barriers to obtaining IRB approval for trauma or sex related research (Cook, Swartout, Goodnight, Hipp, & Bellis, 2015; Jaffe, DiLillo, Hoffman, Haikalis, & Dykstra, 2015; Yeater, Miller, Rinehart, & Nason, 2012). However, a growing body of research now shows that participants are not emotionally distressed by such research – in fact, they find it enjoyable, interesting, and valuable, contrary to IRB assumptions (Carter-Visscher, Naugle, Bell, & Suvak, 2007; Cromer, Freyd, Binder, DePrince, & Becker-Blease, 2006; Edwards, Sylaska, & Gidycz, 2014; Jaffe et al, 2015; Jorm, Kelly, & Morgan, 2007; Labott, Johnson, Fendrich, & Feeny, 2013; Widom & Czaja, 2005; Yeater, et al, 2012).…”