One after another: vicarious trauma associated with archival record coding in sexual assault research

Sexual violence researchers have prolonged exposure to the pain and suffering of others, which can cause vicarious trauma (VT). To date, discussion of VT in sexual violence research has focused on qualitative interviews with sexual assault survivors and how those interactions affect researchers’ well-being. In this article, we explore how VT can develop archival record review studies. We conducted an autoethnographic analysis of four empirical case studies to identify key factors that shape researchers’ VT experiences during archival coding: the volume of records reviewed, potential for recoding, limited human interaction, and exposure to multiple layers of trauma and oppression. Based on our experiences, we propose strategies to mitigate and prevent the VT experienced during archival coding research and discuss how strategies used to manage VT in qualitative interview projects could apply to record review research.