Sources of resistance to digital data collection: Privacy concerns, digital trust and data literacy |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Caroline Roberts (University of Lausanne) |
Access to high quality data on which to base policy decisions and track their impact is an essential component of democratic society. For decades, survey research has been the principal method by which objective and accurate statistics have been produced to inform decision-making, but there is growing demand to turn to alternative data sources (in particular, digital behavioural data). The Covid-19 pandemic had a fundamental impact on the social data collection landscape, revealing weaknesses in existing methods and the data produced, and accelerating innovation in research designs and data collection practice. Among the innovations offering significant potential for improving the future responsiveness of survey research is the use of digital data collection methods - in particular, smartphone apps that provide a platform for multimodal, in-the-moment, data collection and for linking data from multiple sources. Furthermore, research designs that combine data from probability-based sample surveys with mass collaboration (e.g. citizen science projects relying on digital data collection methdods) and other data sources, represent one of the potentially most powerful applications of scientific surveys for future social research. Many barriers to the successful implementation of such innovations remain, however. Among these, public resistance to participating in research using digital data collection methods represents a major challenge because of its implications for the accuracy and representativeness of the data collected. Key sources of resistance to digital data collection methods include concerns about data privacy, and a lack of digital trust and digital, data and privacy literacy. Methodological research is needed to improve our understanding of when and how these different sources of resistance to surveys based on digital data collection methods impact on actual participation decisions, and to test alternatives ways to address them. This session welcomes submissions focused on these concerns.