ESRA 2027 sessions by theme

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Session Details

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 complement or replace traditional instruments with digital data, whether collected through web surveys, smartphone apps, wearable devices, and passive sensing, or obtained by linking survey responses to administrative and other external records (including donated digital data). These approaches offer significant potential for richer, more timely, and less burdensome measurement, yet their success ultimately depends on the public's willingness to take part and to consent to their data being collected, shared, or linked. Across a wide range of designs, concerns about data privacy and security, together with a lack of digital trust, are repeatedly among the strongest predictors of non-participation and non-consent. Because those who decline tend to differ systematically from those who agree, this trust deficit threatens not only the amount but also the representativeness of the resulting data. A range of strategies has been proposed to address this challenge, from more respondent-driven designs, optimising the framing of communications to the provision of greater transparency and control over personal data, yet the evidence on what actually works remains mixed and often discouraging. Much remains to be learned about which methods are most effective, for whom, and at which stage of the data collection process. This session welcomes methodological contributions that develop and test interventions designed to build trust and improve participation and consent across the range of digital data collection methods, and that advance our understanding of when, how, and for whom such interventions succeed.