5.4 Personal safety guidelines for researchers

The measures outlined below may help ensure the personal safety of researchers/interviewers undertaking fieldwork in potentially challenging or unsafe situations. The following must, however, be borne in mind.

Many fieldwork situations pose few risks and it is not necessary to observe guidelines when they clearly are not appropriate.
Conversely, such guidelines cannot cover every eventuality and, indeed, in some situations may not by themselves be adequate.
Alternatively, however, there can be circumstances in which, notwithstanding the presence of some element of risk, observing these guidelines could compromise the objectives of the research involved.

The guidelines should, therefore, be interpreted flexibly. However, it is of paramount importance that in the planning and preparation of any interviews or observational fieldwork, the foreseeable and inherent risks to the personal safety of the interviewers or researchers undertaking that fieldwork should be considered and assessed. Any necessary protocols or safety procedures should be carefully negotiated with and agreed to by the researchers/interviewers in advance. Observing some of the following precautions may involved additional costs, and might even impact upon the staffing levels required for a project. In such circumstances, they need to be explicitly factored into the costings of research proposals.

Researchers should always carry some accredited form of identification, such as a university ID card and/or letter signed by the staff member supervising the project.
Researchers would not be expected to approach any location or enter any premises if they have uncertainties about safety, or else without considering how best they could extricate themselves from the situation in an emergency. Although not every risk can be foreseen, researchers should try and assess what risks might be posed to their own safety by the people they are observing or interviewing, by other people or animals who may be present, and/or by the physical environment in which their investigations are being conducted.
Researchers should be offered the opportunity to have a personal alarm and/or a mobile ‘phone when undertaking fieldwork. It should be remembered, however, that effective though such devices can be, the protection they by themselves provide is limited and, in certain circumstances, they may themselves hold dangers (for example, the possession of a mobile ‘phone may expose a researcher to the risk of being robbed). It is important to consider in advance how and in what circumstances they would be used.
If it is appropriate - for example, because the research involves social groups or physical locations that may be subject to police surveillance or where some risk of violence can be anticipated – the police in the locality where the research is to be conducted should be notified in advance in writing. The notification should explain the broad purpose and nature of the research and should specify the period of time during which the fieldwork will take place.
If it is appropriate, researchers while they are in the field should establish a call back system. A reliable call back contact – such as the research supervisor, a colleague, a friend or a contact in the fieldwork locality – should be identified; each fieldwork session should be planned and agreed in advance between the researcher and the call back contact; the researcher should report when they are starting and when they have finished the session and, possibly, at pre-arranged points during the session. This procedure will not be effective if the nature of the research does not permit the researcher to precisely plan her/his itinerary in advance or where the call back contact would have no practical way of intervening in the event that the researcher should not report in when expected.
Where research necessarily involves ‘cold-calling’, researchers should not enter anyone’s home if they have any uncertainties about safety. If appropriate, an appointment should be made to return and conduct an interview at a specified time (and, if any doubts remain, the interview should be foregone).
In certain kinds of fieldwork it is possible for researchers to work in pairs or in teams. In such situations, it is possible for colleagues to accompany each other into fieldwork situations and/or to wait for one another while interviews are conducted. This is a good way of ensuring the safety of researchers. However, the presence of more than one researcher may on the one hand inhibit the co-operation of research participants while on the other, if a researcher were covertly to rely on the presence of a colleague, this could raise ethical objections.
If researchers do not travel to fieldwork locations in their own cars, they should make use of taxis where appropriate (for example, if the fieldwork concludes late at night and/or public transport is unreliable).