A new collaboration between the Smart Data Donation Service (SDDS) and Understanding Society is exploring whether people’s digital activity records can be combined with survey responses to show how online and offline lives connect.
Understanding Society is the UK’s largest longitudinal household study. Working together with SDDS, the research team will test how data donation could be built into an established national survey.
Participants in the Understanding Society Innovation Panel are being invited to donate information about their YouTube viewing history and Google Play activity. With their permission, selected information will be linked to the survey data they have already provided.
The project will examine how willing people are to donate, which approaches to consent work best, whether donors differ from non-donors, and the quality and usefulness of the data collected.
Professor Tarek Al Baghal, Associate Director for Content Development for Understanding Society said:
“Understanding Society has always looked for new ways to capture a richer and more accurate picture of people’s lives. Data donation has real potential to add another dimension to the information participants already share with us, giving researchers new insights into how people’s digital and wider lives connect. But it’s important that we understand how this approach works in practice. This project gives us an ideal opportunity to test data donation carefully – looking at who chooses to take part, how participants experience the process and the quality of the data we receive. What we learn will help us understand how donated digital data could become a valuable part of longitudinal research in the future.”
Find out more about the project with Understanding Society on the SDDS project page .