TY - JOUR
T1 - Signaling Safety
T2 - Characterizing Fieldwork Experiences and Their Implications for Career Trajectories
AU - Nelson, Robin G.
AU - Rutherford, Julienne N.
AU - Hinde, Katie
AU - Clancy, Kathryn B.H.
N1 - Funding Information:
NSF (National Science Foundation). 2013. Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation.
Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. We thank our anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions, which have strengthened the paper immeasurably. We thank Raia Hamad, Paige Jamieson, Catherine Mesyef, Ayesha Tillman, Kimberly Anderson, and Clair Walkington for their assistance in this project. We thank all survey respondents and interviewees for their participation, and “Lady in the Field” and “Hazed” for initiating conversations on harassment and assault at fieldsites. Finally, we thank Heather Shattuck-Heidorn and M. Elle Saine, the organizers of the Ethics Symposium at the 2013 American Association of Physical Anthropology meeting, whose invitation to speak on this topic inspired our survey and interview project. For funding, Julienne N. Rutherford thanks the NIH Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Program, K12HD055892 (Stacie Geller, PI), and Kathryn B. H. Clancy thanks the Illinois Center for Advanced Study Beckman Fellowship, Illinois Leadership Center Faculty Fellowship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the American Anthropological Association
PY - 2017/12
Y1 - 2017/12
N2 - Numerous studies use quantitative measures to evaluate retention, advancement, and success in academic settings. Such approaches, however, present challenges for evaluating the lived experiences of academics. Here, we present a qualitative thematic analysis of self-reports of positive and negative experiences that occurred while conducting academic field research. Twenty-six semistructured interviews highlighted two central themes: (1) variability in clarity of appropriate professional behavior and rules at fieldsites, and (2) access, or obstacles therein, to professional resources and opportunity. In some instances, respondent narratives recalled a lack of consequences for violations of rules governing appropriate conduct. These violations included harassment and assault, and ultimately disruptions to career trajectories. A heuristic construct of a traffic light describing Red, Yellow, and Green experiences illustrates the ramifications of this distribution of clarity and access within fieldsite contexts. These results extend the findings from our previously reported Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE) about the climates and contexts created and experienced in field research settings. Moreover, this study addresses specific tactics, such as policies, procedures, and paradigms that fieldsite directors and principal investigators can implement to improve field experiences and better achieve equal opportunity in field research settings. [work environment, gender, field experiences, harassment].
AB - Numerous studies use quantitative measures to evaluate retention, advancement, and success in academic settings. Such approaches, however, present challenges for evaluating the lived experiences of academics. Here, we present a qualitative thematic analysis of self-reports of positive and negative experiences that occurred while conducting academic field research. Twenty-six semistructured interviews highlighted two central themes: (1) variability in clarity of appropriate professional behavior and rules at fieldsites, and (2) access, or obstacles therein, to professional resources and opportunity. In some instances, respondent narratives recalled a lack of consequences for violations of rules governing appropriate conduct. These violations included harassment and assault, and ultimately disruptions to career trajectories. A heuristic construct of a traffic light describing Red, Yellow, and Green experiences illustrates the ramifications of this distribution of clarity and access within fieldsite contexts. These results extend the findings from our previously reported Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE) about the climates and contexts created and experienced in field research settings. Moreover, this study addresses specific tactics, such as policies, procedures, and paradigms that fieldsite directors and principal investigators can implement to improve field experiences and better achieve equal opportunity in field research settings. [work environment, gender, field experiences, harassment].
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U2 - 10.1111/aman.12929
DO - 10.1111/aman.12929
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85031105538
SN - 0002-7294
VL - 119
SP - 710
EP - 722
JO - American Anthropologist
JF - American Anthropologist
IS - 4
ER -