Rocket to research

Rethinking research with survivors to enhance enrichment, not extraction

Orbits is a global field guide on how to design intersectional, trauma-informed and survivor-centred interventions to technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TGBV). It proposes a set of design principles to design more impactful interventions, and shows what these principles look like in practice across our three fields of interest: technology, research, and policy.

In this blog, we’ll focus on research. Summarising the chapters on research in Orbits, we’ll explain why we must rethink research to address tech abuse and how research can be reconceptualised to support enrichment, not extraction.

Why focus on research?

Research is a key component of addressing TGBV. This is for two main reasons. Firstly, it is only through a well-researched and nuanced understanding of the problem that we can design interventions that will effectively address the problem. Secondly, tech product development is informed heavily by user research.

Where is research going wrong?

There are three main concerns about ethical research with survivors of gender-based violence (and trauma more generally): extractive practices, retraumatisiation and vicarious trauma.

The term ‘extractive research’ is used to refer to research where information or knowledge is ‘extracted’ from those with experience or knowledge of the research subject without care or interest in their wellbeing, preferences, and needs. In regards to gender-based violence, research is extractive when it uses the experiences and labour of survivors without appropriate consent, control, or compensation. This might involve reducing a survivor’s role and input to that of an informant, disregarding pain or discomfort that may be caused by participation in the research, or discarding information that dissents from the organisation’s own ideas.

When survivors’ insights are treated like an asset but their own agency in the process isn’t, when they are consulted but have no idea of why and how their experience will be used, and when language, culture, race, disability, and other characteristics aren’t considered even when survivors mention them, it’s extractive.

In the case of researching GBV, or any other form of trauma, a further concern is ‘retraumatisation’. This is when an experience causes a survivor’s negative feelings of trauma to reemerge. If special care and attention is not given, research can end up being a painful experience for survivors which reignites past hurt and emotions. Retraumatisation can occur when interviews force survivors to disclose trauma in gory detail though there is no need for it, or when questions aren’t asked with the understanding that trauma might elicit leading responses.

A further issue is vicarious trauma, where those doing the research experience trauma through exposure to and engagement with the subject matter. Through consistently engaging with traumatic content, researchers can themselves experience trauma symptoms and negative emotions, especially if they have a personal connection to or experience of what they are researching. This is an especially pertinent issue when it comes to GBV, as its ubiquitous nature means that many researchers will have direct experience of it. When the possibility of vicarious trauma is not considered and mitigated, researching the issue can extend rather than address trauma.

In both the product and policy design worlds, there has been a move towards a more robust, evidence-based model. As a result, user research has emerged as a flourishing field and profession. It seeks to understand the behaviours, needs, and motivations of users or potential users of any product, service, or policy. In particular, Human-Centred Design has been considered ground-breaking and has had substantial traction in the tech sector. While this shift is encouraging in that it puts more agency in the hands of the interviewees, extractive and retraumatising practices still remain a concern. Particular concerns about human-centred design include that it favours generalisation and oversimplification, doesn’t prioritise safety, ignores or worsen asymmetries, falsely assumes neutrality of the designer and design process, and often produces short-lived pilots with no follow-up.

How can we rethink research?

However, It is possible for researchers to design settings and processes that are non-extractive, affirming, and enabling. Many survivors are eager to participate in research because they have experiences of not being heard or believed, and because they want to share their own experience to help others going through the same trauma. Trauma survivors report benefits from engaging in research including feelings of validation, catharsis, or altruism. Understanding this and putting survivors and their many different experiences, perspectives, and needs at the centre of your research process is imperative. Research on trauma does not need to be extractive or retraumatising; it can be enriching.

The Orbits principles in practice

We can apply the Orbits principles to research to see how research can become a tool for enrichment, not extraction. Below are a few examples how researchers can employ the Orbits principles to tackle TGBV.

1. Safety

• Carefully considering who to involve in the research — just because someone is up for the research doesn’t mean it is the best thing for them
• Clearly communicating to participants about what topics will be covered
• Offering a debrief with researchers and/or a restorative activity like mindfulness, yoga, or a walk

2. Agency

• Seeking informed consent. We must ensure participants understand and fully consent to the ways their stories and contributions will be stored, shared, and attributed to them
• Offering different options for contributing to research (for example: audio, video, submitting a piece of writing, or reviewing what you’ve written)
• Not restricting survivor’s input to only interviews if they want to be involved in other ways. If they’ve offered to do more because they want to, that’s not an extractive practice. This can come from a place of empowerment

3. Equity

• Compensating people. Keeping in mind that there may be legal restrictions for some to accept money, provide alternatives like vouchers for food
• Providing nursery and child-caring responsibilities, as well as helping with travel costs
• Letting people talk about challenges that go beyond your subject area

4. Privacy

• Deleting voice and video recordings after a certain period of time. You can keep an anonymised script
• Making survivor testimonies anonymous by default. Allow people to choose their own pseudonym. Remember that some people want to share their stories with their names as part of their healing journey so if your project has space to give that visibility, do that
• If conducting research for a company that the survivor is a user of, offering survivors the option to have their views decoupled from their user account

5. Accountability

• Being transparent about the process, time, and compensation from the outset
• Being upfront about gaps in knowledge and how systemic bias may affect the project
• Being clear about sample sizes. Small sample sizes, even when diverse, can give misleading results if they are used to represent their entire community or a larger, diverse population

6. Plurality

• Mitigating the impact of group participation where some participant(s) are uncomfortable or alienated due to their identity or cultural background
• Leaving space for interviewees to share what they want to share about other aspects of their life that are relevant to them
• Letting the interviewee lead the conversation

7. Power redistribution

• Letting interviewees choose aspects of the interview (e.g who the interviewer will be, what’s the interview medium)
• Giving interviewees review and final sign off over anything produced with their story
• Creating space for interviewees to co-design and provide feedback on the research process

8. Hope

• Creating warm interview and research spaces, online and offline. Comfortable, non-clinical ambience, especially for those who have experienced oppression at the hands of police and/or state, is likely to result in more open and explorative conversations. Recreating this online can be much harder, but is possible through friendly facial expressions and grounding exercises
• Always leaving space for reflection at the end of an interview. Not ending conversations abruptly. Where possible, end the interview on a positive note
• Planning how you will use the research to actively affect change and sharing with participants how their story is going to improve conditions for others

These are just a few of the examples of what the Orbits principles look like when applied to research. Read many more in Orbits. You can download the full guide at c.chayn.co/orbits or read the research chapters here.