Should Researchers Work Alone With Participants in Private or Potentially Unsafe Settings?

Is It Safe or Ethical to Meet a Research Participant Alone?

Qualitative research often depends on privacy. A participant discussing domestic violence, health, sexuality, workplace misconduct, political beliefs, or another sensitive experience may not speak freely with additional people in the room. Ethnographic and community research may also take researchers into homes and other places where bringing a colleague would be intrusive or impractical.

Yet privacy can create a safety problem. If a researcher is alone with a participant in a private home, isolated room, unfamiliar neighborhood, vehicle, or remote location, assistance may not be immediately available if the situation changes.

So should researchers avoid one-to-one meetings altogether? Usually, the better question is whether lone working is appropriate under the particular conditions and what safeguards would make the remaining risk acceptable.

Lone Research Is Not Automatically Prohibited, but It Should Be Assessed

The Question Is Not Simply Whether You Are Alone

Lone working changes what happens if something goes wrong

Being alone is not itself evidence that an activity is unsafe. It does, however, remove some forms of immediate assistance. A colleague cannot intervene, call for help, witness an incident, or notice that the researcher has failed to return if no system has been established for doing so.

This is why lone fieldwork appears explicitly in research-safety guidance. UKRI's Economic and Social Research Council states that research ethics committees should consider researcher safety, especially in circumstances including lone fieldwork. UCL's off-site working guidance similarly identifies lone or isolated working as a significant consideration during research home visits and requires assessment of whether lone working is appropriate or a colleague should be present.

The existence of lone working should therefore trigger a question, not an automatic conclusion.

A private setting and an unsafe setting are not the same thing

Privacy can be ethically valuable. Sensitive interviews may require a setting where participants cannot be overheard. Confidentiality, autonomy, and the quality of disclosure may all be affected if family members, employers, gatekeepers, or other people remain present.

That does not mean every private setting is equally appropriate. A bookable interview room with nearby staff and two exits creates a different risk profile from an isolated private residence that the researcher has never visited. Likewise, a participant's request for privacy does not necessarily require the researcher to accept whatever location the participant proposes.

Good planning tries to preserve necessary privacy without creating unnecessary isolation.

Home interviews require their own risk assessment

Participant homes are common and sometimes highly appropriate research settings. They may be more accessible, comfortable, or private for participants who cannot easily travel. But the researcher has less control over the environment.

UCL's off-site working guidance identifies several potential hazards associated with home visits, including physical assault or verbal abuse, theft or damage to property, animals, and lone or isolated working. These examples illustrate why “the participant's home” should not be treated as a neutral location merely because the participant prefers it.

Before a home visit, relevant questions may include who else is likely to be present, whether the location can be reached and left safely, whether reliable communication is available, what time the visit will occur, whether there are known hazards, and whether the researcher has a practical exit strategy.

The participant's characteristics should not become a shortcut for labeling someone dangerous

Safety assessment needs care because crude assumptions can stigmatize participants. Membership in a vulnerable population, having a mental health condition, having a criminal history, experiencing homelessness, or discussing a sensitive topic does not by itself establish that a participant poses a threat.

The assessment should instead focus on credible hazards arising from the interaction and context. Relevant information may include known previous threatening behavior where legitimately available, the nature of the proposed activity, environmental conditions, prior contact, safeguarding concerns, and whether the research design creates predictable conflict.

Risk assessment should protect researchers without converting stereotypes into safety policy.

The researcher's circumstances also matter

A location that is manageable for one researcher may present different risks for another. Familiarity with the area, experience conducting difficult interviews, communication ability, accessibility requirements, mobility, transportation, and other circumstances can affect both exposure and the researcher's options if something happens.

UKRI's current grant guidance requires research organizations to conduct suitable and sufficient risk assessment for on-site and off-site research and, where appropriate, consider reasonable adjustments for individual circumstances.

This does not mean researchers should be excluded from fieldwork because of personal characteristics. Rather, safety arrangements should fit the person actually doing the work.

Check-in systems are useful only if someone will act on them

A common safeguard for lone fieldwork is a check-in or buddy system. The researcher provides details of where they will be, confirms arrival or departure, and contacts a designated person at agreed times.

That system needs an escalation procedure. Who notices a missed check-in? How long do they wait? Do they call the researcher, the venue, a supervisor, security personnel, or emergency services? What information do they have about the researcher's location?

UCL's lone-working guidance includes periodic checks and confirmation of start and finish among possible controls for interviewing participants in homes or isolated locations. The important principle is that a check-in is a safety mechanism only when a missed check-in causes an appropriate response.

Researchers need a realistic way to leave

A researcher should not enter a potentially difficult meeting without considering how it can end. This may involve sitting where the exit remains accessible, maintaining independent transportation, avoiding locations from which departure depends entirely on the participant, keeping communication available, or arranging a predetermined reason to make contact with a colleague.

Researchers should also know that they are permitted to end an interview or field visit when they feel unsafe. A protocol that describes how to enter the field but not how to leave it is incomplete.

Adding another researcher is one control, not the universal solution

Pairing researchers can reduce some risks, but it has costs and may introduce new ethical issues. A second researcher may make a participant less willing to disclose sensitive information, increase perceived formality, create confidentiality concerns, or simply be impractical for large projects.

Other controls may sometimes achieve the necessary level of safety: choosing a different venue, meeting during daylight hours, establishing check-ins, arranging nearby support, using remote interviewing, changing transportation arrangements, or modifying the data-collection procedure.

The aim is not to maximize the number of people present. It is to reduce foreseeable risk without unnecessarily compromising the research or the participant's privacy.

Some situations may make lone working inappropriate

There are circumstances in which the remaining risk may be too high to justify lone working. This could occur where there is credible information about serious aggression, where the location presents substantial hazards, where reliable communication or emergency assistance is unavailable, or where institutional policy prohibits the arrangement.

The appropriate response may be to use two researchers, relocate the encounter, use another mode of data collection, involve appropriate local support, postpone the activity, or decide that the proposed interaction should not proceed.

Exactly who has authority to assess and manage researcher safety should be established under the institution's procedures rather than left to the researcher to negotiate alone.

When a Participant Requests an Interview at Home

Common Mistakes About Lone and Private Research Encounters

Decide Whether Lone Working Is Appropriate Before the Meeting

Do not reduce the decision to “Am I comfortable going alone?” Personal judgment matters, particularly when conditions change, but a defensible safety decision should consider the foreseeable risks created by the fieldwork arrangement and the controls available.

The final arrangement should satisfy both ethical and institutional requirements. Researcher safety is not achieved by eliminating every private interaction, but neither should privacy become an excuse for avoidable exposure.

Before Meeting a Participant Alone, What Should You Check?

Frequently Asked Questions About Working Alone With Participants

Privacy Does Not Have to Mean Unmanaged Isolation

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