Staff Burnout Prevention and Mitigation Protocol for Research Studies on Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence

There is an increasing focus on sexual violence (SV) and intimate partner violence (IPV) in public health research, including epidemiological, prevention, and intervention studies. Although critical institutional structures and policies exist for the protection of research participants, less consideration is given to the well-being of research staff in academic and medical research settings, including risk of burnout and vicarious trauma. No widely accepted procedures or practices exist for the conduct of SV- and IPV-focused research specifically among research staff. In this article, we first describe opportunities and recommendations for identifying, preventing, and addressing burnout among staff working on SV- and IPV-focused research studies. Second, we draw upon an instructive example from one of our research studies that led to the development of a burnout prevention and mitigation protocol for research staff, describe the resulting protocol, and provide guidance for researchers who are interested in developing similar tools or procedures for their own studies. Based on the limited research in this area and our own experiences as SV and IPV researchers, we propose that burnout mitigation protocols will likely be most impactful and effective if they are tailored to the unique needs and data collection methods of the research team, are co-created with research team members, and are adaptive and responsive to research team needs for the duration of the study. A burnout prevention and mitigation protocol should be considered a critical component of conducting research on trauma-relevant topics and has the potential to generalize beyond SV and IPV research.