Kriminologischen Kolloquium: Coping with emotionally challenging research: Findings from the Researcher Wellbeing Project mit Dr. Tina Skinner (University of Bath)

Research ethics procedures have substantially improved over the last three decades, but, despite this, researchers’ wellbeing is often overlooked.  This is particularly concerning when researching topics that may cause emotional distress and secondary trauma for the researcher (e.g on crime, death or miscarriages of justice). The British Psychological Society (2020) state that the symptoms of secondary trauma are alike to the symptoms of posttraumatic stress ‘disorder’ felt by a victim-survivor of a direct traumatic event. Secondary trauma can be experienced at any time in a research project, including fieldwork, coding quantitative/qualitative data, reviewing the literature or during policy campaigning. Symptoms of secondary trauma include distressing thoughts, avoidance, limited concentration/sleep, and alterations in mood.