Research breakdowns: A constructive critique of research practice involving grief, trauma and displaced people

Impactful research on refugee mental health is urgently needed. To mitigate the growing refugee crisis, researchers and clinicians seek to better understand the relationship between trauma, grief and post-migration factors with the aim of bringing better awareness, more resources and improved support for these communities and individuals living in host countries. As much as this is our intention, the prevailing research methods, that is, online anonymous questionnaires, used to engage refugees in mental health research are increasingly outdated and lack inclusivity and representation. With this perspective piece, we would like to highlight a growing crisis in global mental health research; the predominance of a Global North-centric approach and methodology. We use our recent research challenges and breakdowns as a learning example and possible opportunity to rebuild our research practice in a more ethical and equitable way.

Diversity, equity, and inclusivity in observational ambulatory assessment: Recommendations from two decades of Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) research

Ambient audio sampling methods such as the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) have become increasingly prominent in clinical and social sciences research. These methods record snippets of naturalistically assessed audio from participants' daily lives, enabling novel observational research about the daily social interactions, identities, environments, behaviors, and speech of populations of interest. In practice, these scientific opportunities are equaled by methodological challenges: researchers' own cultural backgrounds and identities can easily and unknowingly permeate the collection, coding, analysis, and interpretation of social data from daily life. Ambient audio sampling poses unique and significant challenges to cultural humility, diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) in scientific research that require systematized attention. Motivated by this observation, an international consortium of 21 researchers who have used ambient audio sampling methodologies created a workgroup with the aim of improving upon existing published guidelines. We pooled formally and informally documented challenges pertaining to DEI in ambient audio sampling from our collective experience on 40+ studies (most of which used the EAR app) in clinical and healthy populations ranging from children to older adults. This article presents our resultant recommendations and argues for the incorporation of community-engaged research methods in observational ambulatory assessment designs looking forward. We provide concrete recommendations across each stage typical of an ambient audio sampling study (recruiting and enrolling participants, developing coding systems, training coders, handling multi-linguistic participants, data analysis and interpretation, and dissemination of results) as well as guiding questions that can be used to adapt these recommendations to project-specific constraints and needs.

What does a personality science approach to post-traumatic growth reveal?

Recent research has advocated for the value of conceptualizing post-traumatic growth as positive personality change. However, most research continues to use both methodologically suspect assessment tools and unsupported theoretical assumptions. How can personality psychologists contribute to the pursuit of high-quality research on this topic? The current special issue, which grew out of the European Association for Personality Psychology (EAPP) expert meeting on “Integrating Post-Traumatic Growth and Personality Change”, held at the University of Nottingham, on September 16–17, 2019, includes 15 papers that (1) examine short-term change in multiple personality constructs after adversity, (2) highlight the limitations of only assessing post-traumatic growth with retrospective questionnaires, and (3) provide theoretical and methodological recommendations for the continued advancement of the study of post-traumatic growth through the lens of personality psychology. While these papers all address specific ways to advance the personality science of post-traumatic growth, collectively they highlight the many unanswered questions that future research should tackle.