My Investigation Toolkit

My practice as a human factors investigator is rooted in sociology. That is where I began, and in many ways it is where I have never left. The questions that drive good sociological inquiry, why do people behave as they do, what does the world look like from where they are standing, how do the structures and systems around us shape what we think is possible, are the same questions that drive good investigation. The methods are also, when you look closely, essentially the same. We have simply given them different names.

Investigative interviewing draws on the same principles as the qualitative research interview. Being in the work is ethnography. The concept of local rationality, understanding why a person’s behaviour made complete sense to them given their circumstances, is sociological in its bones. It descends from a tradition that has always insisted that human behaviour cannot be understood in isolation from the context that produces it.

What strikes me, after years of working in healthcare investigation, is how much the field reinvents wheels that social science has been turning for a long time. That is not a criticism. It is an observation about how knowledge travels, and how it often arrives in a new place wearing a new name without anyone quite recognising where it came from. Walk-through talk-through is ethnographic fieldwork. The timeline interview is oral history. The after action review has its roots in reflective sociological practice.

I do not say this to be clever about it, although I would be lying if I didn’t say I am proud of my roots and identify as a sociologist. But I say it because recognising the tradition behind a method tells you something important about how to use it well. Ethnography works not because of the specific steps involved but because of the disposition it requires. Curiosity without agenda. Presence without assumption. The willingness to sit with complexity rather than reach for a simple explanation. These are not techniques. They are habits of mind.

The tools I describe in this series are the ones I return to again and again in my practice. They are mine in the sense that I have shaped them through use. They are a combination of old methods and the new ones shared with me by Human Factors academics and practitioners. I would like to share them with you. For those who come to them for the first time welcome and for those of you are familiar with them remember to share your knowledge and the tools widely.

These articles are part of an occasional series in which I share the tools and approaches I return to in my work as a human factors investigator. My practice is rooted in sociology, and I have come to believe that the methods social science has developed over many decades have more to offer healthcare investigation than is generally recognised.