INTRODUCTION Throughout the history of social and anthropological research, there has been debate on the insider–outsider/ native–stranger controversy as to who should carry out the field work. On the one hand, it can be said that insiders/natives have a unique knowledge of their group and they are ‘endowed with special insight into matters necessarily obscure to others, thus possessed of a pene- trating discernment’. 1 On the other hand, it can be argued that ‘unprejudiced knowledge about the group is accessi- ble only to non-members of those groups’. 2 Thus, can or should metropolitan residents research their rural coun- terparts and if they do are there inherent pitfalls or bene- fits? This discourse will explore our personal experiences in the context of planning a rural health project, entering the field, accessing the informants, interviewing the infor- mants and leaving the field. PLANNING THE HEALTH RESEARCH PROJECT When we commenced our current project all but one of the team were resident in Sydney. The ‘non-Sydney-sider’ was a palliative care nurse working in western New South Wales (NSW) who had approached us with her concern in relation to the problem of the support needs of rural fami- lies of oncology palliative care patients. This ultimately became the focus of our research. She had confidence in the Sydney-siders because of her past professional associ- ation both in the clinical and education spheres with two of the team. Thus, even though we were outsiders we had previous personal contact with rural health workers. Also as speculated by Titchen and Binnie 3 doing clinical nurs- ing research as an outsider is often made easier by collab- oration in a partnership with an insider nurse clinician. As I will elaborate later, the research would have been far more difficult without this personal contact. While the team was predominantly metropolitan in origin two mem- bers had been raised in rural NSW and another had been associated for a long time with rural health workers and had relatives in rural NSW. This did make a difference in our general rapport with rural contacts. Before the planning stage of this project, none of us had carried out any research in rural NSW apart from sending surveys to nurses State-wide through professional Aust. J. Rural Health (1999) 7, 181–185 Correspondence: Professor Lesley Wilkes, Professor of Nurs- ing, PhD(NSW), MHPEd(NSW), GradDipEd(Nurs)(Syd), BSc(Hons)(Syd), Clinical Nursing Research Unit, Wentworth Area Health Service and University of Western Sydney–Nepean, PO Box 63, Penrith, NSW 2750, Australia. Email: <l.wilkes@nepean.uws.edu.au> Accepted for publication July 1998. METROPOLITAN RESEARCHERS UNDERTAKING RURAL RESEARCH: BENEFITS AND PITFALLS Clinical Nursing Research Unit, Wentworth Area Health Service and University of Western Sydney–Nepean, Sydney, Australia ABSTRACT: Can or should metropolitan residents research their rural counterparts and if they do are there inherent pitfalls or benefits? Throughout the history of social and anthropological research there has been debate on the insider–outsider/native–stranger controversy as to who should carry out the field work. This discourse will explore the author’s personal experiences in the context of planning a rural health project, entering the field, accessing the informants, interviewing the informants and leaving the field. KEY WORDS: benefits, metropolitan researcher, personal journey, pitfalls, rural. Lesley Wilkes Original Article