Field Workers at the Interface

This issue of Developing World Bioethics includes a collection of papers on intermediary staff and volunteers working at the interface between research institutions and researchers, and the communities from which research participants are recruited. 'Field worker' – a short hand commonly used in many research settings – refers here to those whose main role is face-to-face engagement with participants, who usually speak the par-ticipants' first language, who are from or live in the study areas, and whose work entails moving around the study areas or health facilities. Field workers can be differentiated from medical or scientific staff for whom only part of their duties entail direct interaction with participants, and who are primarily based in the research institution or the clinic. In international research settings field workers are variously called research assistants, community interviewers , data collectors, fieldworkers, field assistants, assessors, follow up staff or defaulter tracers. Although some may hold first degrees or certificates, many are secondary school leavers without higher education opportunity; overall they are formally less qualified than clinical and research staff. Instead, field workers often have extensive informal training and experience from earlier volunteering and jobs in research centres or the NGO sector, which often require similar tasks and expertise. 1 Their roles may include communicating about studies and mobilisation and follow-up of participants, conducting interviews, and carrying out relatively simple biomedical data-collection procedures such as taking temperatures and collecting finger prick blood samples. Field workers' labour relations to research institutions vary. The most clearly formalised is in contracts – in the contexts described by the contributors typically for up to one or two years – which may be extended for periods of up to one or two years, in some cases for decades. At the opposite end of the spectrum we find 'volunteers', who may be reimbursed expenses, given tokens of appreciation , or payments for specific services. Volunteers may take on fairly similar roles to field staff, including recruitment and follow-up, or data collection, and are sometimes recruited from trial participants in other studies. 2 Volunteers can also have a more consultative role for example through participating in community advisory boards or other community representative bodies, or through informal links to community based organisations such as youth and womens' groups or local professional associations (e.g. cycle taxis, sex workers). With most volunteers receiving some income, and with some receiving monthly bank transfers, or even …