Operationalising 'vulnerability': Investigating the processes by which police officers identify and respond to people who are categorised as vulnerabl

I would propose that this research project utilises several different methodologies to achieve its aim. The primary method would be of participant observation: I would be assigned to ideally a couple of Staffordshire police units in order to gain a wider perspective of attitudes to vulnerability as well as protecting their need for confidentiality. Staffordshire Police is one of the largest police forces in the country and includes its own Major and Organised crime department, which offers the enormous benefit of a comparative study across units. I would need time to get to know the officers as individuals as well as their procedures and rituals in the workplace. I would also need to establish their trust, as I am a civilian and an academic. This increases the likelihood that when the methodology changes, their responses can be trusted as valuable to the project. Further, this can permit ethnographic description of the environment and culture that officers find themselves in, and broadens the contextual and empathetic understandings of the study.