Traumatized Scientists

Scientists are professionals who assume responsibility for systematically studying natural and social phenomena with the goal of creating, expanding, and utilizing knowledge. Their scientific endeavors are undertaken through various research techniques [Page 778]intended to provide both depth and breadth to the human experience and to understanding and maintaining our natural surroundings. As scientists engage in the study of topics that are experienced as being emotionally sensitive, painful, or traumatizing, they become susceptible to secondary or vicarious traumatic stress reactions that can affect their professional and personal well-being. These secondary traumatic stress reactions appear to be most common when scientists are immersed in the lives of traumatized subjects through the process of qualitative research.

Different models of scientific inquiry are based on different epistemological perspectives regarding the nature of knowledge and how knowledge can be known and understood. In the realm of social science inquiry, quantitative and qualitative research methods provide scientists with very different methods of understanding and collecting data and how that data can be used to generate and expand existing knowledge. The differences in these two methods of study also have implications for how scientists understand the nature of the data being collected and how they interact with research subjects in the data collection process.

Scientists who engage in research from a quantitative perspective are assumed to be entering the study from an objective and unbiased perspective that necessitates a systematic scientific process to control the research environment so that the relationship between specific variables of interest can be understood. This “scientific method” begins with existing knowledge or theories from which hypotheses emerge related to the relationship between the variables to be studied. Scientists use a controlled set of research procedures to collect specific numerical data that are analyzed through complex statistical procedures. These statistical outcomes provide information about the relationship between variables that allows scientists to either accept or reject their research hypotheses. This type of scientific inquiry is reductionist in that it allows researchers to narrow their inquiry to specific and very narrow slices of phenomena. The adherence to an objective research stance and the narrowing of focus to specific aspects of the human experience can shield scientists from experiencing research participants' personal or social reactions to sensitive and traumatic experiences, thus reducing the likelihood of secondary trauma or compassion fatigue.

Qualitative research methods challenge scientists to remove their objectivity and to become immersed in the experiences of the research participants as a participant observer. Qualitative inquiry removes the methodological controls and attempts to carry out data collection in ways that promote greater “big picture” understanding of the research participants' natural surroundings, life experiences, and larger cultural world that influence the subject being studied. Qualitative data are narrative and can be collected using multiple methods including field notes taken by scientists performing research as they reflect on their own thoughts and feelings associated with their research experience; narratives collected through in-depth, open-ended interviews with research participants; and observations of the participants' life experiences. Scientists repeatedly review the collected data to analyze and organize it into useful categories through a variety of coding protocols. Typically, qualitative researchers participate fully in the data collection, transcription, analysis, and coding of the data. Therefore, scientists who engage in the qualitative study of sensitive and traumatic topics are significantly exposed and reexposed to the traumatic materials throughout the course of the study and are more susceptible to the experience of secondary trauma and compassion fatigue.

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