Mitigating Trauma in Qualitative Research Infrastructure: Roles for Machine Assistance and Trauma-Informed Design

TL;DR

This paper proposes a trauma-informed computing approach for qualitative research tools, introducing TIQA, a system that uses language modeling to reduce researchers' exposure to traumatic content, supported by a formative user study.

Contribution

It introduces TIQA, a novel trauma-informed qualitative coding system leveraging AI, and offers a framework for integrating trauma-informed principles into research infrastructure.

Findings

TIQA helps mitigate researcher trauma during qualitative analysis.

Participants found TIQA useful for managing exposure to traumatic content.

The study highlights challenges in applying trauma-informed principles to technical systems.

Abstract

Researchers increasingly look to understand experiences of pain, harm, and marginalization via qualitative analysis. Such work is needed to understand and address social ills, but poses risks to researchers' well-being: sifting through volumes of data on painful human experiences risks incurring traumatic exposure in the researcher. In this paper, we explore how the principles of trauma-informed computing (TIC) can be applied to reimagine healthier tools and workflows for qualitative analysis. We apply TIC to create a design provocation called TIQA, a system for qualitative coding that leverages language modeling, semantic search, and recommendation systems to measure and mitigate an analyst's exposure to concepts they find traumatic. Through a formative study of TIQA with 15 participants, we illuminate the complexities of enacting TIC in qualitative knowledge infrastructure, and potential roles for machine assistance in mitigating researchers' trauma. To assist scholars in translating the high-level principles of TIC into sociotechnical system design, we argue for: (a) a conceptual shift from safety as exposure reduction towards safety as enablement; and (b) renewed attention to evaluating the trauma-informedness of design processes, in tandem with the outcomes of designed objects on users' well-being.