Research methodology
HITT-Q: Historical Intergenerational Trauma Transmission Questionnaire
A tool for exploring vulnerabilities and resources related to family history and personal experiences.
HITT-Q helps us see memories and silences, losses and fears, coping mechanisms, and resources that can be passed on to future generations
Why does Ukraine need HITT-Q right now?
The history of Ukraine includes several waves of collective trauma: mass famines and the Holodomor, forced collectivization and the dispossession of the kulaks, political repression, World War II and the Holocaust in Ukrainian territories, deportations and forced resettlements, the Chernobyl disaster, and the Russian-Ukrainian war that began in 2014.
Since 2022—a full-scale invasion.
Since 2022, earlier layers of family and historical experience have come to the fore in Ukrainians’ narratives. Research shows that people draw on family memory to make sense of current events.
A meta-analysis of studies on transgenerational trauma indicates that prolonged or repeated stress can reactivate its psychological consequences in subsequent generations.
Another study showed that the link between a family’s history of the Holodomor and psychological trauma depended on the family context.
The transgenerational dimension of modern warfare requires further exploration to reduce the risk of entrenching and passing on trauma-induced patterns to children, to support one’s own resilience, and to lay the groundwork for post-traumatic growth.