Does the emotional burden of participating in trauma-related surveys discourage future participation? A population-based study

Background: Participating in observational trauma-related research can be emotionally burdensome but is generally evaluated as positive. However, whether this burden negatively affects the response at follow-ups, leading to biased outcomes, has received very little attention so far.

Objective: The aim of the present prospective study is to better understand the extent to which the emotional burden of participating in a trauma-related survey negatively affects the response at subsequent surveys.

Method: For this purpose, data was extracted from the population-based Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel. We assessed whether the emotional burden of participating in the first survey of the longitudinal trauma-related VICTIMS study (Ntotal = 5,870) predicted the response at the second and third survey of the VICTIMS study and three subsequent non-trauma surveys. We conducted multivariate logistic regression analyses and applied the Benjamini-Hochberg correction of p-values.

Results: About 7% of the participants rated the first trauma survey as certainly emotionally burdensome. The analyses revealed that the response at the subsequent surveys was not significantly lower among those for whom the first trauma survey was certainly emotionally burdensome. The response at the third trauma survey among those who rated the first two trauma surveys as certainly burdensome, was as high as among those who rated the first two trauma surveys as certainly not burdensome. Other negative feelings/thoughts about the survey did not moderate these relationships. Results remained consistent across subsamples that experienced potentially traumatic events, stressful life-events, and clinically significant PTSD symptoms.

Conclusions: We found no evidence that the emotional burden of a trauma-related survey negatively affects the response at subsequent trauma and non-trauma surveys, and thus does not cause biased study outcomes. This suggests that concerns on the part of medical, ethical, or internal review boards about the possible harm of such surveys can be further relaxed.