May 2022 - April 2025
PI: Dr. Elisabeth Stelson
Many professionals who work with people who have trauma histories experience vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma is “second hand” trauma that is passed on to workers when they interact with individuals or communities who experienced trauma directly or encounter information about the trauma. A worker may not directly experience the trauma, but because they work with people or communities that have, the worker may be exposed to the traumatic experiences indirectly. Vicarious trauma can negatively affect the mental and physical health of professionals through psychological and physiological stress-response pathways. Akin to second-hand smoking, vicarious trauma is endemic in many healthcare and social service work settings. It is therefore critical to identify ways to prevent workers from becoming themselves traumatized by the work they do.
The Vicarious Occupational Trauma Exposure (VOTE) Index is the first instrument to systematically differentiate sources of vicarious trauma in work environments from a worker’s psychological response—important to understanding where to intervene to protect workers. The VOTE Index specifically identifies:
- What parts of a worker’s job expose them to vicarious trauma
- How often they are exposed to vicarious trauma
- How strong the vicarious trauma exposure is
The VOTE Index demonstrated very strong validity and reliability in a national sample of the substance use disorder workforce (N=1,415). The development and validation of the VOTE Index was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH-NIDA).
More information about the VOTE Index and FAQs can be found here and under our website Resources.
The VOTE Index is available in two formats: one narrative and one in a table. Formatting was based on cognitive interviews.