Unprepared for the worst: Risks of harm to qualitative researchers

Bloor, Michael, Fincham, Ben and Sampson, Helen (2010) Unprepared for the worst: Risks of harm to qualitative researchers. Methodological Innovations Online, 5 (1). pp. 45-55. ISSN 1748-0612

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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.

Item Type: Article
Schools and Departments: School of Law, Politics and Sociology > Sociology
Depositing User: Ben Fincham
Date Deposited: 06 Feb 2012 18:37
Last Modified: 28 Mar 2012 12:14
URI: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/17481
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