Trauma-Informed Participatory Research Methods: An Experiential Workshop

Trauma-informed participatory research methods involve meaningful partnerships between community members and researchers, from design through dissemination, to identify and understand through research the strengths and needs of communities and society at large. At all levels, it involves intentional fostering of safety; trust and transparency; peer support, collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice, and choice; and an anti-oppressive, antiracist approach recognizing intersecting cultural, historical, and gender issues. Aligned to the conference theme of strengthening social impact through collaborative research, this experiential workshop will explore a range of examples of how to form transformative research-practice partnerships, design a study, collect and analyze data, and disseminate findings using a trauma-informed participatory approach. We will begin by providing an integrated model of SAMHSA's trauma-informed care framework and the community engagement continuum, applied to a research context. Then, we will provide examples from several projects across the spectrum of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches highlighting options for how to structure a trauma-informed participatory study, including working with populations that have experienced both contemporary event-based and historical trauma. One project, a community-based participatory research project on Indian child welfare, utilized a community action board made up of both American Indian community members and state agency officials that brought members together in a way never previously done not only discuss past injustices but also to work together to develop research questions and guide the research for the project. In a second project, we used a multi-year community-engaged approach to develop and test in a randomized control trial an AI-powered chatbot intervention for pregnant and new mothers of color. Finally, we will describe exploring the needs of LGBTQ youth in foster care using a trauma-informed participatory approach. We will conclude the workshop with an opportunity for participants to work in small groups and consider applications of this approach to their own projects.