Measuring What Matters: Data Absenteeism, Science Communication, and the Perpetuation of Inequities

K. Viswanath, Rachel Faulkenberry McCloud, Edmund W. J. Lee and Mesfin A. Bekalu

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2022, vol. 700, issue 1, 208-219

Abstract: The ways in which we collect health and social data, particularly data on vulnerable and underprivileged populations, is enormously influential over the quality and content of science and health communication. Data absenteeism—the absence or limits of data on groups experiencing social vulnerability—is endemic; and as a result, inferences drawn from studies with absentee data are questionable. Reasons for data absenteeism include tendencies toward conventional recruitment of the subjects in research, the ways in which communities are engaged or not engaged in the research process, and a lack of understanding and appreciation of the lived reality of the socially vulnerable. The “hardly reached†are often labelled “hard to reach,†keeping this critical population out of view. One approach to mitigate data absenteeism is to engage key stakeholders of the community and its residents in the entire research process from design to dissemination, which influences how research questions are asked and answered and how research gets used. We argue for a more inclusive science of science communication to promote diversity and equity.

Keywords: data absentism; communication inequlity; measurement; science communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027162221093268 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:700:y:2022:i:1:p:208-219

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221093268

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().