NSF Award
2307412
Field-based research is integral to many geoscience research programs and can present unique challenges for scientists and other participants. Fieldwork is often conducted in teams that include established researchers and their students, which introduces complex power dynamics. These conditions create challenges and stressors that increase vulnerability to hostile behaviors such as bullying, harassment, and other identity-based exclusionary behaviors. The need to address safety, identity-based harassment and other exclusionary behaviors in field campaigns is growing more urgent to ensure safe and productive research environments. This work supports the field-based geoscience community by increasing field team preparedness and changing fieldwork team culture to be inclusive, supportive, welcoming, discrimination-free and productive. The project is a synergistic effort between FieldSafe and the ADVANCEGeo Partnership to support researchers in meeting the new NSF proposal requirement for the inclusion of a field safety plan in all field-based proposals, and to support institutional change initiatives in other research funding agencies and at academic institutions. This is especially novel because, to date, no research has been conducted on the effectiveness of training focused on field safety and/or anti-harassment and tools for the design of inclusive field campaigns.<br/><br/>The goals of this project are to (1) create and widely disseminate a field safety, anti-harassment, and bystander intervention training certificate program through an online course platform, (2) develop a toolkit to support field teams in planning safe and inclusive field campaigns and (3) research the impact of these trainings and support tools for field culture change. This project produces new knowledge of the effectiveness of a program that utilizes a combined self-paced online course combined with synchronous guided debrief and reflection sessions to support the development of inclusive culture in all field environments. The results of this project will contribute a robust and transferable research design and instruments to study the culture and safety of fieldwork. The research will contribute important findings around critical components for the instructional sequence and implementation of training and how the application of this training may vary based on different field contexts.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
