ESRA 2027 sessions by theme
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Questions of Reliability, Validity, Bias, and Privacy in Data Donation Studies |
| Coordinator 1 | Professor Johannes Breuer (Center for Advanced Internet Studies) |
| Coordinator 2 | Professor Laura Boeschoten (Utrecht University) |
| Coordinator 3 | Professor Florian Keusch (University of Mannheim) |
| Coordinator 4 | Professor Zoltán Kmetty ( ELTE Centre for Social Sciences) |
| Coordinator 5 | Dr Stefkovics Ádám ( ELTE Centre for Social Sciences) |
| Coordinator 6 | Professor Struminskaya Bella (Utrecht University) |
Session Details
Data donations using Data Download Packages (DDPs) have become an increasingly employed approach for collecting digital trace data in the social sciences. However, research on data donation has highlighted some key challenges for such data. Studies have, e.g., demonstrated that data donation is prone to non-consent and selection bias, differential willingness to participate across demographic groups, and non-random missingness. In addition, researchers must navigate various privacy and data governance constraints (e.g., granular consent, third-party data risks, GDPR compliance) as well as issues in data access caused by persistent platform volatility. So far, studies have focused primarily on challenges related to the collection of digital traces through data donation. With this session we would like to extend the focus to also cover processing and analysis aspects. To that end, we want to bring together contributions that identify and propose solutions to key challenges with regard to validity, bias, privacy, and technical reliability in the collection, processing, and analysis steps of data donation studies.
Contributions may cover but are not limited to:
- Diagnosing and Correcting Biases: Investigations into non-consent, self-selection, nonresponse, and coverage biases and methodological solutions for addressing those.
- Privacy, Governance, and Trust: Ethical consent frameworks, privacy-preserving data extraction/processing solutions, and ensuring GDPR compliance.
- Platform Volatility and Dynamic DDPs: Strategies for coping with changing export schemes, UI redesigns, shifting DDP contents, and extraction pipeline maintenance.
- Measurement Error and Processing: Methods, frameworks and tools for assessing and dealing with measurement error and general challenges in the processing of DDP data.
- Multimodal Data Integration: Extending data donation studies beyond text and activity logs (solutions for dealing with image, audio, video data).
- Data Access and Usability: Strategies for reducing participant burden when requesting, downloading, and sharing data (e.g., AI-based assistants, Data Portability APIs).
