Unprepared for the Worst: Risks of Harm for Qualitative Researchers

Abstract

This paper draws on the results of an Inquiry, commissioned by Qualiti (Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact), a node of ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods, into the physical and emotional harm suffered by qualitative social researchers. It argues that junior researchers and PhD students, the main recipients of such harm, are being let down by some principal investigators and PhD supervisors who are failing to manage researcher risks effectively. This record of the universities in researcher risk management compares poorly with the management of risks in cognate organisations, such as the management of risks to journalists in media organisations and of risks to fieldworkers in aid agencies. This deficiency in university risk management is arguably a matter of culture rather than deficient structures: an analogy is drawn with Mary Douglas's work on different cultural orientations to risk.