Fig 1.
Summary of the demographics of survey respondents, where larger circles represent a greater proportion of respondents, coloured according to the demographic characteristic.
Age of respondents is reported in blue, identified gender is reported in pink, identified ethnicity is reported in yellow, lived experience as someone with a disability or chronic condition is reported in green, and lived experience as a transgender person is reported in orange. ‘A/AA’ represents Asian/Asian American, ‘B’ represents Black, African, African American, or Afro-Caribbean, ‘H/L’ represents Hispanic/Latinx, ‘FN’ represents First Nations, and ‘NA’ represents the proportion of respondents who chose not to answer.
Fig 2.
The reasons for negative field experiences among respondents (n = 324) and their corresponding impact on fieldwork.
Twenty-three reasons could be selected in the multiple response question. The result of this question is indicated by the number in parenthesis sorting the reasons from the most common one at the top to the least common one at the bottom. The last three reasons were not included in the multiple-choice question. The stacked bars next to each reason describe the impact of it, asked in the follow-up question on a 1–5 scale (1—not at all impactful and 5—a major impact).
Fig 3.
Word clouds of the most frequently occurring words in the long-form responses for (a) the long-form response on reasons for negative field experiences, and (b) the question “How do you feel about conducting fieldwork in the future?”. Larger words reflect a higher frequency of occurrence.
Fig 4.
Summary of strategies to navigate the improvement of women’s polar fieldwork experiences throughout the different phases of fieldwork, based on the outcomes of the survey.
Table 1.
Table of fieldwork aspects (excluding scientific activities) identified through this survey to be addressed in a pre-fieldwork briefing.