Our study centers on research in hard-to-reach environments, where certain types of methodologies might be difficult or impossible. We use the context of slums and informal settlements as a “hard-to-reach” site for outsiders and researchers where five epistemologically and methodologically diverse teams will as the same question in the same place at the same time. Rarely do we have the opportunity for direct comparisons between different research approaches. In this project, teams conduct research in each field site (Year 1: Cape Town, South Africa; Year 2: Barranquilla, Colombia) using their preferred scientific approaches. Teams represent institutional ethnographers, visual sociologists, computer scientists doing completely remote web-scraping, survey research, and citizen science. After collecting their data from the first field site, they will gather together to negotiate what is “truth” from their various perspectives. From this, we will learn about what would be missing if a research methodology wasn’t available for studying a hard-to-reach site. The process will be repeated for the second site, with the intention that research teams will innovate on their methodological approaches after learning what parts of “truth” other teams were able to uncover. Meanwhile, another team is studying the five teams to learn about how they frame their research, instruct their research assistants, and engage with other teams during “ground truth” sessions. Another modeling team is constructing a platform and methodological approach to reconcile disparate data, analysis, theories, and assumptions from the team into structures that help facilitate cross-disciplinary discussions. This presentation will discuss the scope and design of the project, and share some preliminary findings and lessons learned from cross-disciplinary discussions towards a common understanding of “truth” about the first field site.