Strategies for facilitating support, self-care, and well-being of research team members studying sexual assault: 30 years of lessons learned

This article covers the author’s experiences conducting sexual assault research for 30 years using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Lessons learned while doing this research and strategies for self-care, including processing one’s experience in the research context and managing research teams with undergraduate and graduate research assistants are described. I draw on experiences of other researchers and clinical research findings in the area of vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress and ways of coping and seeking/providing support. Topics include selecting research team members, training and mentoring activities, providing relevant research and self-help reading materials, setting boundaries and role modelling self-care, checking in with team members regularly to see whether they need changes in work tasks, breaks, and/or other support including talking about experiences of working on gender-based violence (GBV) research. Normalising these impacts and providing spaces for student researchers and faculty to support each other and talk about their experiences and seek outside help from campus and community centres and agencies are also discussed. Career and life stage issues are addressed regarding how one’s research life is impacted by one’s personal life and vice versa. The need for research on sexual assault researchers and survivor researchers in particular is also mentioned.