Applying Trauma-Informed Evaluation Principles In Gender-Based Violence Evaluations
December 2025
About the author: Alecia Kallos is a Project Lead and Director of People and Culture at Three Hive Consulting. A Credentialed Evaluator with a public health background, she brings experience using collaborative, strengths-based, and trauma-informed approaches to design and lead mixed-methods evaluations across provincial, community, and national programs.
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December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada, also known as White Ribbon Day. Established in 1991, the day commemorates the anniversary of the December 6, 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, where 14 women were murdered in the name of “fighting feminism”. The day is intended to force society to recognize the pervasiveness of violence against women and to appreciate the lives of the 14 women who were murdered.
The victims of the massacre whose lives we remember and appreciate were:Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, and Annie Turcotte. Violence against women and, more broadly, gender-based violence persists today. The Canadian Women’s Foundation estimated that in 2022, 184 women and girls were killed by violence. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified gender-based violence in Canada.
Trauma-Informed Principles
At Three Hive, we have had the privilege of conducting evaluations on gender-based violence prevention and response strategies and programs. These evaluations are deeply informed by trauma-informed principles and our Trauma-Informed Evaluation Process, which guides our practice.
“Gender-based violence: Harmful acts directed at an individual based on their gender. It disproportionately affects women, girls, Two Spirit, trans, and non-binary people. It includes sexual, physical, mental, and economic forms of abuse as well as “threats of violence, coercion, and manipulation”. ”
But first, what does it mean to be trauma-informed? A trauma-informed approach uses a set of principles that recognizes that trauma is both widespread and invisible. Individuals and communities may carry the impacts of past trauma, and the evaluation process must be designed with this in mind. Evaluations should minimize harm, prevent re-traumatization, and promote safety for all participants. A trauma-informed approach is strength-based and has six principles[1]:
Safety: Staff and those they serve feel physically and psychologically safe, in their own definitions of safety.
Trustworthiness and transparency: Processes and decisions are transparent and designed to build trust.
Peer support: Peers help create safety and hope, build trust, enhance collaboration, and promote healing.
Collaboration and mutuality: Share power and decision-making.
Empowerment, voice, and choice: Build on strengths and believe in resilience. Change the history of diminishing voices and support others in shared decision-making and trajectory-setting; facilitate, rather than control.
Cultural, historical, and gender issues: Practice moves past stereotypes and biases and addresses historical and intergenerational trauma.
Trauma-informed practice includes using the principles across all phases of an evaluation project. We have written about developing Trauma-Informed Tools, here, I’ll talk more broadly about how we apply these principles in our work using examples from some of the gender-based violence prevention and response evaluations we’ve conducted.
[1] From the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Six Principles of Trauma-Informed Care
Trauma-Informed Evaluation in the Gender-Based Violence Sector
Conducting evaluations in the gender-based violence prevention and survivor support space needs to recognize that the issue of gender-based violence and its resulting effects are wicked problems. That is, they are problems that are difficult or impossible to solve because there is no clear agreement on the nature of the problem, no single solution, and no precise stopping point when they are solved. Wicked problems change as you work on them. Solutions for wicked problems may impact an endless set of related problems or factors. Solutions for wicked problems must be rooted in collaboration, dialogue, and shared understanding and can’t be categorized as “right-or-wrong” but as “better-or-worse”. This is important to acknowledge as you evaluate programs or initiatives that aim to impact gender-based violence because it allows you to calibrate the basis for determining the merit or value of what you are evaluating.
So, what does trauma-informed evaluation look like across the lifecycle of an evaluation project?
1. Planning
Plan Collaboratively. We feel strongly that planning for evaluations looking to address issues of gender-based violence should be collaborative or even participatory. Including experts and those deeply embedded in the work and intentionally asking how to ensure the plan is trauma-informed will guide you in the right direction.
For our gender-based violence evaluations, we prioritized convening Advisory Groups or Evaluation Working Groups that include frontline staff or those with lived experience. We used these groups to collaboratively build all aspects of our evaluation plan. Focus your scope. As gender-based violence is a wicked problem, embedded in complex systemic issues, it’s important to tightly scope your evaluation. When there are many, inter-related problems and solutions, it’s important to focus on evaluating specific elements of the program, policy or initiative. Developing or using program logic (e.g. a theory of change or logic model) to guide your evaluation can strengthen your evaluation scope and logic. Ensure that the information you are collecting fits a specific purpose and that you aren’t collecting information that won’t be used.
When we were evaluating a project aimed at streamlining access to domestic violence shelters, our evaluation scope ended at the moment the individual entered the shelter. It was important to clearly define this boundary in the planning to ensure we weren’t asking questions about the shelter’s processes or the individual’s experience with the shelter. 2. Data Collection
Choose your participants carefully. Lean heavily on the expertise and judgement of those with lived experience in selecting your evaluation participants, especially if you are collecting information from survivors of gender-based violence. Consider leveraging existing trusted relationships to ensure participants’ safety. Ensure you have a plan for supporting trauma responses or other reactions, include directions for providing support into the tool and process.
In an evaluation focused on strengthening capacity to support individuals impacted gender-based violence, , program staff felt it was not possible to determine whether a program participant was in a physical, mental, or emotional safe enough space for us to connect with for interviews or to email them a survey. We modified data collection plan from interviews and emailed surveys led by us, to a quick in-the-moment survey offered and conducted by program staff if the participant met safety criteria that we co-developed.In other evaluations, we have relied on program staff to make decisions about whether and when to ask a survivor to participate in a survey. We provided staff with the general instructions and gave them the option of offering survivors a paper or online survey. Test your data collection tools. Using the right language and terminology is so important in this sector. To ensure the language you use is strengths-based, non-judgmental, and doesn’t re-traumatize survivors, have those with lived experience carefully review your tools and provide feedback.
For the survey offered and conducted by program staff, the survey underwent several rounds of revision with the program managers to ensure that we used the right language and asked questions that could specifically support decision-making to improve the program. While these revisions took longer than expected, it was important to make sure we got it right and minimized harm and burden on participants who were in a particularly vulnerable position.Prioritize informed consent, voluntary participation, and participant well-being. Clearly describe the evaluation and data collection purpose in plain language. Ensure the consent is truly informed and that participants understand what your evaluation can and cannot do for them. Ensure participation is voluntary and provide as much choice as possible to participants—whether they want to receive information afterwards, how their contributions should be used, whether their name should be included in the report. If providing incentives, provide them at the start so that the incentive isn’t tied to their ongoing participation. Be on high alert, looking for physical or verbal signs of distress in your participants.
In the shelter access evaluation, we conducted focus groups with women in shelters about their experience accessing the shelters. We were careful to structure our focus group guides so that our questions weren’t interpreted as asking the women to retell their stories about the violence they experienced and were clear that we were not evaluating their experience once they entered the shelter. We wanted to collect only the necessary data, not pose an undue burden, and minimize the risk of re-traumatization for participants.3. Data Analysis
Approach your analysis with an intersectional lens. Acknowledge the different social categories, identities, and systemic factors at play. Consider the role of trauma and power dynamics when analyzing your data.
In the strengthening capacity to support individuals impacted gender-based violence evaluation, there was tension between the organization who hired us and the organizations we were hosting focus groups with. We conducted a sensemaking session with the Advisory Council which had representatives from both groups to help us understand the data collected in the focus groups and understand where organizational tension may have influenced responses. 4. Reporting
Be cautious in your quote and story selection. Celebrate and empower the voices of those with lived experience. Carefully consider how quotes or stories are selected and used; don’t exploit an individual’s trauma to increase the impact of your report. Consider adding a warning at the start of your report if you include quotes or stories that could upset readers.
In the shelter access evaluation, women in the shelters shared their stories about their experience accessing shelter. Details about the violence they suffered emerged in these stories. We chose not to include quotes that included details of the violence, to protect the women’s identities and because those details didn’t enhance the overall point we were trying to make.Acknowledge complexity. Although your evaluation may not examine the multitude of individual, organizational, cultural, and systemic factors that impact gender-based violence, it’s important to note these factors in your reporting. While these factors may have been out of the control of the program, policy, or initiative you were evaluating, you need to acknowledge them. If you don’t, those reading the report may take your omission as an oversight. Calling out these factors highlights the complexity of the issue at hand.
Have your report reviewed carefully by those in the field. Context, tone, and language are particularly important in the gender-based violence prevention and survivor support field. Build in time and budget for experts (e.g. your Advisory Council or evaluation working group) to review your report and ensure you are using strength-based language and providing the appropriate context.
In the strengthening capacity to support individuals impacted gender-based violence evaluation, there were terms used in the administrative data that had different connotations across the sector. Having a trusted member of the evaluation advisory group who understood both how the administrative data were categorized and worked in the sector helped us use the appropriate language in our reports.5. Caring for your team and yourself
Check in frequently. Reach out to your team members, especially during data collection and analysis, where they may be exposed to upsetting stories and results. Engaging in this work can be emotionally challenging, and evaluators may experience vicarious trauma or feel overwhelmed by the scale and complexity of gender-based violence. Peer check-ins are helpful; but in some situations, it might be necessary to seek additional, trained supports for yourself or for your team. As evaluators, we sometimes grapple with feelings of hopelessness—being somewhat removed from direct action yet faced with the weight of difficult findings and stories. Reporting on distressing data or accounts without clear, immediate solutions can leave us feeling powerless to create individual change.
On the shelter access evaluation, one of the most important findings was the number of people the program was unable to serve because they were at capacity. Our team had a somber moment of reflection as we recognized the gravity of what that number in our report described.Work collaboratively and with empathy. In my experience, professionals in this field are highly committed and often feel protective of the people they support. These experiences may occasionally lead to resistance or obstacles during evaluation. It's important to be open about the evaluation’s purpose, scope, and limitations, and to clearly explain your objectives, intentions, and willingness to work together to get it right. Engage in conversations to understand their perspectives and address their concerns.