Interviewing Scientists

We have had a great time here at Scott Base, meeting with scientists, talking with staff and getting out into the wide Antarctic world around us. Now that we are half way through our time here, I thought I would reflect on the work we have done so far and our plans for the next week and a half.

It has been great fun talking to all sorts of different scientists about their work. We have been learning about how they view the Antarctic environment, how they feel their research impacts the environment and how they make decisions about their work based on the environment. After inviting them to participate in our study we give them our information paper that describes our study and tells them about their rights as a participant. When working with humans for research there are a lot of ethics we need to be aware of, like how we recruit people, how we share our data to make sure it is anonymous, and making sure they know they have the right to withdraw their information at any time. Once all that is out of the way, the people who want to participate are asked to fill in a short questionnaire and then we interview them.

[Driving out to field camp - what will they do out there?]

So far we have been interviewing people who have come through Scott Base. In the next week we will be heading out into the field to meet with scientists at their camps. This should be fun, but will also be a lot of work as we will have to take the scientists away from their work for 20 minutes to an hour and try to find a quiet place to do the interview. Hopefully we will be able to find some willing participants to help us with our research.