Developing Distress Protocols for Research on Sensitive Topics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnu.2008.10.008Get rights and content

Two protocols that were developed to address risks related to emotional distress in an ongoing, qualitative, community-based study of adolescent dating violence are presented. The first protocol is for use in telephone screening to identify individuals at high risk of adverse emotional reactions. The second protocol guides interviewer's responses to emotional distress expressed by participants during in-depth research interviews. The study is briefly described, and the process used to develop the protocols is discussed. The process of developing the protocols caused the authors to reconsider some previously held assumptions about human subject protections in research on sensitive topics.

Section snippets

The study

The research project is a qualitative study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The aim of the study was to develop a theoretical framework that describes, explains, and predicts how dating violence unfolds during adolescence. The project is being conducted by a collaborative team of university- and community-based researchers. The research team includes five investigators (three university-based nurse researchers, the executive director of a domestic violence/rape

Relevant ethical issues

The research team deliberated on several ethical issues that were raised during the development of the protocol. The three broad principles of ethical research identified in the Belmont Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (Department of Health, Education, & Welfare, 1979) served as a basis for these deliberations. The three principles are autonomy, beneficence (and nonmaleficence), and justice (Barnbaum & Byron, 2001).

Screening Interview and Distress Protocol

The screening interview and distress protocol is presented in Figure 1. This protocol is being used by research associates who conduct telephone screening interviews.

The aim of the telephone screening is to screen out individuals for whom participation in the research interview would be too risky. Because the funding agency asked for a detailed protocol for this screening, we sought to clarify our original exclusion criteria and provide a clearer plan for assessing these criteria. We rejected

Discussion

We found the task of developing detailed distress protocols time consuming and, at times, trying. We discovered, as did Newman and Kaloupek (2004), that “all researchers must accommodate individual differences in risk-benefit perspectives when constructing study procedures…but they often lack a reliable point of reference for decisions about how to do so” (p. 383). We had to operationalize some decisions that had been previously based on the research associate's unarticulated clinical

Acknowledgment

Research was funded by the CDC, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (Donna Martsolf, principal investigator, 1RO1CE001183-01).

References (14)

  • NewmanE. et al.

    Assessing the ethical costs and benefits of trauma-focused research

    General Hospital Psychiatry

    (1999)
  • BarnbaumD.R. et al.

    Research ethics: Text and readings

    (2001)
  • Becker-BleaseK.A. et al.

    Research participants telling the truth about their lives: The ethics of asking and not asking about abuse

    American Psychologist

    (2006)
  • BoothroydR.A.

    The impact of research participation on adults with severe mental illness

    Mental Health Services Research

    (2000)
  • BoothroydR.A. et al.

    Emotional reactions to research participation and the relationship to understanding informed consent disclosure

    Social Work Research

    (2003)
  • DeanK.L. et al.

    Acceptability of asking parents about their children's traumatic symptoms

    Psychiatric Services

    (2004)
  • Department of Health, Education, and Welfare

    The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research: The Belmont Report

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (127)

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text