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Dangerous fieldwork

Researchers sometimes work in settings which are potentially dangerous to their health and safety. For example, they can be vulnerable to violent confrontation, verbal abuse or infectious diseases. This volume explores the contexts, settings and situations which pose high physical risk to the fieldworker, and presents the strategies the author has developed for reducing the risks. Raymond Lee draws on his own experience in Northern Ireland, as well as on the work of other researchers with groups such as outlaw bikers and youth gangs, drug addicts and informants in inherently dangerous occupations. Dangerous Fieldwork also offers valuable information on the increasingly important topic of sexual harassment.

Online Sage Research Methods

Doing research on sensitive topics

This book is a comprehensive guide to the methodological, ethical and practical issues involved in undertaking research on sensitive topics. Raymond M Lee explores the reasons why social research may be politically or socially contentious: its relation to issues of social or political power; its capacity to encroach on people's lives; and its potentially problematic nature for the researcher. Issues examined include: the choice of methodologies for sensitive research; problems of estimating the size of hidden populations; questions of sampling, surveying and interviewing; and sensitivity in access and the handling of data. The book also discusses the political and ethical issues at stake in the relations between the researcher and the researched, and in the disclosure, dissemination and publication of research.

Unobtrusive methods in social research

This volume aims to provide an up-to-date discussion of the role of unobtrusive methods in social research, in a comprehensive and clearly written style. It explores how unobtrusive methods can be generated, looks at unobtrusive methods and the Internet, and examines some of the wider ethical issues raised by the use of these methods in social research. Social researchers often collect "self-report" data based on interviews and surveys. There are major problems associated with the "reactive" nature of these data, for example, people are not always honest when asked to supply information on "sensitive issues". Unobtrusive methods produce data that are not elicited in this way. Instead data are "found" in the word, captured from various forms of observation or are retrieved from data repositories of various kinds. The production of unobtrusive methods requires considerable ingenuity on the part of the researcher and this book explores the methods involved and how they are produced. There are also ethical problems associated with unobtrusive methods which are discussed in the book. The Internet promises to be a major source of unobtrusive data and so is discussed in some detail.??i??a book all self-respecting social researchers should read??i??i??' - ??i??SRA News??i??. What are unobtrusive methods in social research? How are they undertaken and what are their advantages? What are the problems associated with their use? Webb et al's 1966 classic, ??i??Unobtrusive Methods??i?? introduced the concept of unobtrusive research. Since then very little else has been written in the field. This book revisits the ground covered by Webb et al, re-contextualizing it for the information age and putting the case for an increased use of unobtrusive methods. ??i??Unobtrusive Methods in Social Research??i?? provides an updated discussion of the role of unobtrusive methods in social research. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of Webb et al's approach in order to understand more explicitly how unobtrusive methods are generated and examines some of the wider ethical issues raised by the use of unobtrusive methods in social research.In addition, it offers a discussion of using the Internet as a tool for unobtrusive research. ??i??Unobtrusive Methods in Social Research??i?? is a worthy successor to Webb et al. It is up to date, comprehensive and clearly written. It will help undergraduates to understand what has become a standard topic on research methods courses and it is hoped that it will encourage postgraduate students and professionals to make more use of unobtrusive methods in their research.