Week 4 Practical: Fieldwork method & safety protocol

The rules that make on-campus observation safe to run at all — informed consent, the buddy system, and the disengagement rule that ends an observation before it costs anyone anything.

15 March 2027

Before the practical#

Nothing to bring, and nothing yet to observe. This is the paperwork-and- protocol week that has to happen before case clinics start next week.

In the practical#

Three rules, in the order they get applied:

1. Consent — every observation site is one students and staff already move through as part of ordinary campus life; nobody is placed anywhere they wouldn’t otherwise go, and no site is observed without the course’s sign-off that it is currently sanctioned for fieldwork.
2. Buddy system — no solo observation, ever. Not because two people are mechanically safer than one, but because a log backed by only one observer’s word corroborates nothing, and a log that can’t be corroborated can’t be classified.
3. Disengagement rule — the moment an observer no longer feels able to leave a site at will, the observation ends, immediately, without waiting to finish a count or confirm a pattern. Nothing you might see in the next ten seconds is worth trading for the certainty that you can walk away.

Afterwards#

Signed consent forms and buddy pairings are due before the first case clinic in week 5. No fieldwork happens without both on file.