ABSTRACT
While there is growing awareness and advocacy concerning the planning and creation of safer research environments and approaches to research for participants, little attention has been paid to the emotional challenges that sport and physical activity university-based researchers who use community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches may face and how these might be addressed. CBPR researchers may be at greater risk of secondary traumatic stress (STS), as these research approaches are typically conducted with and for members of equity-owed communities, and research topics and contexts may potentially expose researchers to the trauma, violence, and distress that members of these communities face. Further, the relational and long-term nature of CBPR involves significant emotional investment from the university-based researcher. In this chapter, we examine the emotional challenges that CBPR researchers may face and how these have and have not been addressed in the literature. We then provide examples of emotionally difficult situations that we experienced in our CBPR work and suggest strategies that could be used to prepare for and cope with STS. We conclude by examining possible challenges and opportunities related to embedding personal and professional self-care strategies in CBPR.
