'It's nice of you to come, but it would be better if government were here'

Description

In the push for evidence-based decision making, governments are often seeking researchers to gather information and views of the public for them. This collaboration can offer opportunities for fruitful co-produced research. However, it can also produce feelings of disappointment, blurred identities, hesitancy and conflict. In this talk we reflect on the ‘dynamic rhythms of multi-positionalities’ (Ryan, 2015: n.p.) we as researchers inhabited during a recent one-year project: ‘Data Benefits’. During the project, we worked with stakeholders from government and participants from the local community to explore views around data sharing. There remains a lack of research into public attitudes and understandings towards data sharing of social security data, particularly of the views of those whose data would be being shared. In this case, we look at data sharing and linkage to target and deliver benefits to qualifying beneficiaries, prevent penalties, and allow population-level research to understand people’s feelings – their hopes and misgivings – about these systems. We ran seven focus groups at community centres in Edinburgh in May 2024, speaking to 41 individuals in receipt of benefits. Participants were recruited on our behalf by four charity partners based in Edinburgh who provide support for those receiving
benefits. At the focus groups we sought feedback on a series of data sharing scenarios to help ground our discussions with people in receipt of benefits and the wider community. This approach of deliberative focus groups involved using hypothetical scenarios to discuss how benefits data may be shared in the future and any hopes or misgivings participants felt towards these possibilities.
Through this research, we found ourselves positioned and mobilised by our funders, stakeholders and participants as both insiders and outsiders, yet only ever being able to exist somewhere ‘in between’ (Corbin Dwyer and Buckle, 2009:62). For example, we could tell participants that the government would see the results of the research, but we could not say if any substantial changes
would be made on their behalf. We also saw first-hand how research can play a performative role of bringing together data publics and being part of the process of public issue-making around data harms, just as government consultations through citizen committees and public workshops have brought people together to discuss their agency vis a vis datafied social services (Scottish
Government 2022). In these cases, studying datafication on affected individuals can play a role in bringing about a public through the process of research and inquiry, further raising ethical questions about our positionally in relation to research subjects. Our experiences lead us to ask how this kind of research should be done, and what, if any, the role of researchers should be in it.

Period	2 Jun 2025
Event title	ASSIST 2025: The Biennial Conference of the UK Association for Studies of Innovation, Science and Technology
Event type	Conference
Location	Edinburgh, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National