Across the social sciences, from anthropology to psychology, researchers have woken up to the realization that a true understanding of humanity requires collecting data across diverse cultural settings. In recent years, this has increased demand for fieldwork-based studies, often involving researchers from North America and Europe collecting data from communities within relatively low-income nations. 

In a new paper in Nature Human Behavior, an international team of social scientists emphasizes that as interest in fieldwork-based studies continues to grow, researchers must also do more to forge equitable collaborative partnerships.