Participant experience (participant being the individual providing data) is central and do no harm is a minimum standard, though we must strive for more. The study I designed was mixed methods – asking survey questions about participant’s experience with sexual violence to a random sample of female students and interviewing a sample of those who agreed to be interviewed. Engaging in either could easily be triggering for anyone who had experienced sexual violence. I provided standard supports – opt in, clear consent, and resources available for counseling when needed. But it was the interview opportunity that surprised me.

The offer was open to anyone who wanted to engage, and one woman who responded taught me a lasting lesson. She had been a victim of sexual violence, and she had spoken to no one about it. When she received the survey, it brought back painful memories, but she reached out for an interview. We met, using a semi-structured interview. She spoke to the harm of her experience, the triggers from the survey, and the healing the survey and this interview provided. She spoke to the fact that this “research” experience was giving her a chance to process something she’d buried, tell her partner something she had never told them before, and the opportunity to help raise awareness of sexual violence.

I’m sure my approach to the interview was clunky, and this was not the end of this particular individual’s processing, but what I learned was that asking questions about someone’s experience is really first about them and what they need, and secondarily about research for the “greater good”. Since this experience, I’ve been mindful of what I ask, and how it might benefit the person I am asking.

Given the topic I chose, you might imagine that the college administration was reluctant to hear the results. This was the late 80’s and speaking publicly about sexual violence was fairly new. I learned a great deal about stakeholders, and the need to onboard them to be willing to make sense of the data, use that data as fodder to name actions, and implement changes in services and policies.

I’ve relived this reality repeatedly throughout my career – being asked to re-analyze data because a stakeholder didn’t like the results, being told “this is what we’d like the data to say” by a colleague wanting to bolster her own position, and seeing stakeholders in power re-interpret a result to frame it in a way to better meet their need vs. the need of a marginalized group. Pushing back can be intimidating, but I’ve found when I share the questionable ethics or potential harm to others I’m observing, I usually achieved an element of success.