I'm preparing for fieldwork and want to be ready
Sort out permissions, safety, data, money and your own wellbeing before you leave, and plan for what you'll do when things change.
In short
Start here, today. Make a two-column list: everything that must be true before you leave (approvals, insurance, bookings, equipment, local contacts) and the date each must be done by. Mark anything that depends on someone else's reply and add it to the Waiting-For list. This takes about 30 minutes.
After that, work through these steps. Choose one to jump to it.
Step by step
Tick each step as you finish it. Open a step for the how.
0 of 7 steps done
Confirm every permission in writing
Check that your ethics approval covers the sites, methods and people you'll actually work with. Depending on where you're going, you may also need local or community research approval, research permits or visas, landowner or site permission, or export permits for samples. Archives may require registration, advance ordering of material and fees or permission for photography. Some of these take months, so ask your supervisor and people who've worked there before what applies.
Make a safety and check-in plan
Many universities require a travel registration or fieldwork risk assessment, so ask your department what yours uses. Agree a check-in routine with one named person: how often, by what method, and exactly who they should call if they don't hear from you. Keep emergency contacts, insurance details and your institution's emergency number on paper as well as on your phone, and plan for places with no signal.
Decide how data leaves the field
Work out how each day's data gets off the device it was collected on: an encrypted laptop and encrypted external drive, uploads to your institution's approved storage when you have a connection, photos of notebook pages every evening. Make sure the plan matches what your ethics approval says about identifiable data, recordings and consent forms. Test the whole routine once before you go.
Pack and test your equipment
Run a full trial at home: record a mock interview, take a test sample, photograph a page in poor light, charge everything from one adapter. Bring spares of the small things that fail, such as batteries, cables, memory cards, labels and pens that work in the rain. Check what you can carry on a plane and what customs may ask about.
Sort the money before you go
Find out what your grant or department will pay for, whether they advance funds or only reimburse, and which receipts they need. Photograph receipts weekly and keep the originals together. If waiting weeks for reimbursement would be a real problem for you, raise it with your department or financial aid office before you leave.
Keep a field notebook every evening
Spend 15 minutes at the end of each day writing what you did, where and with whom, what surprised you, what went wrong, and the file names of that day's data. Do it even when you're exhausted. When you're writing up a year later, these notes are how you'll remember why sample 14 was collected late or what an interviewee meant.
Plan for change, and for yourself
Write a short “if this, then that” list for the likely problems: a site cancels, a key contact leaves, you lose a week to illness or weather. Rank your research goals so you know what to protect if time runs short. Then plan the human side too: rest days, food, how you'll stay in touch with home, and who you can talk to, because fieldwork can be lonely and, depending on the topic, emotionally heavy.
Words you can use
Is this you? Signs to look for
- Your departure date is fixed but your permits, travel funding or equipment aren't.
- You have a research plan but no plan for a cancelled site, bad weather or a week of illness.
- You haven't decided how your data will get from the field to somewhere safe.
- You're assuming you'll manage the research, the admin and the rest of your life all at once while away.
Why this happens
Fieldwork packs a lot of risk into a short window. You may have one season, one funded trip or one set of permissions, and a problem you could fix in an afternoon at your desk becomes expensive when you're several time zones away. Ecological sampling, ethnography, interview tours and archive trips look very different, but in all of them the preparation decides much of what you bring home.
Students tend to prepare carefully for the research itself and much less for everything around it: who knows where you are, what happens to your data if a laptop is stolen, how you'll cover costs while a reimbursement is slow, what you'll drop if you lose a week. That surrounding layer is where things usually go wrong, and most of it can be settled before you leave.
Worth a look (2)
- Sage Research MethodsBooks, case studies, videos and practice data sets on research methods, from interviews to regression. Your library usually provides access.
- PRISMAThe reporting guideline for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, with the checklist, flow diagram templates and extensions for scoping and other reviews. Many journals expect you to follow it.
When to bring someone in
Your research ethics office can confirm what your approval covers and how to handle changes in the field. Your university's travel, risk or health and safety office usually handles registration, insurance and emergency support. If you're an international student, check with the international student office before travelling outside your host country, and confirm that your health insurance covers you where you're going. See a travel clinic well ahead if your destination has health risks. Many counselling services can also support you remotely while you're away.
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