Project Safer: A Holistic Approach to Identifying and Mitigating Traumatic Incidents During Field Research

This award supports a multidisciplinary team of researchers who will engage with scientists in a wide variety of disciplines in order to build a database of traumatic incidents associated with scientific fieldwork. The overarching goal of the project is to collect data necessary for building fieldwork safety plans that can effectively support a diverse scientific community, including researchers from socially stigmatized backgrounds who are at elevated risk of experiencing traumas. In order to enable informed planning for the multitude of risks associated with scientific fieldwork– e.g., vehicular crashes, theft and security issues, mental health episodes, interpersonal conflicts, sexual harassment and assault, physical injuries, and illnesses– the team will use a combination of questionnaires and in-depth interviews with scientists who conduct fieldwork and participate in research expeditions. This information will help field scientists identify patterns of risk and inform best practices for safety management. The project will 1) build a large-scale, cross-disciplinary database of incidents experienced by scientists while conducting fieldwork, 2) identify the different types of incidents that occur and to whom, the causal and protective factors, and 3) clarify the lasting impacts on scientists’ well-being and career trajectories. At present, there is a critical absence of data on traumatic events beyond harassment; there is also a lack of cross-disciplinary studies. This study will inquire across localities, disciplines, academic subfields, and institutions in order to produce the first-ever large-scale dataset on present and historical incidents in the field commensurate with risk-reporting standards in the led outdoors activity industry. The team will use a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach to clarify who is most at risk for different types of events in the field, identify the correlates and consequences of those risks, and co-produce solutions to mitigate them. The use of systems thinking to identify and address incidents within field work will launch the wide-scale study of risk within field science, transforming the way that safety concerns are understood and approached during the data collection in wilderness locations. This information will provide a framework to guide field scientists in identifying patterns of risk and inform best practices for safety management moving forward. This project is funded jointly by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate for Geosciences, and is managed by the ER2 Program of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.