Dissemination for Data Justice

Twentieth century social work researchers have seen increased emphasis on three seemingly distinct areas-- participatory methods, data science, and implementation science. More recently, the concept of "data justice" has emerged. Data justice is the notion that science should be oriented toward community needs and community knowledge, and oriented away from methods that minoritize communities and perpetuate resource hoarding. Data justice challenges traditional ways of doing research that lack community involvement in the design of data collection procedures, data collection itself, interpretation of data, and data access. Community members are often asked to participate in surveys; results are often not shared meaningfully (if at all) or are shared in stigmatizing and harmful ways. Data justice aims to address these problems. Focusing on processes of dissemination, this roundtable seeks to engage participants with interests in participatory methods, data science, and implementation science to discuss how principles of data justice can guide the development and distribution of research products and related knowledge.

The roundtable will begin by outlining principles of data justice and illustrating one attempt to disseminate data and results from an ongoing project, Resilience in Communities After Stress and Trauma (ReCAST). ReCAST is a collective efficacy intervention that engages youth and adults in dialogue on neighborhood transformation, community leadership, and organizing for social change. ReCAST is also a cluster randomized controlled trial, which aims to test the intervention's impact on individual and neighborhood levels of collective efficacy and community violence. Because no national or regional data sources capture community-level protective factors, like collective efficacy, ReCAST involves a community survey. The survey provides important information about community member perspectives and experiences, informs the intervention by helping participants identify the challenges in and strengths of communities, and measures ReCAST’s impact on neighborhood collective efficacy and exposure to violence. The ReCAST team is using Quarto, an open-source scientific and technical publishing system to communicate results from the community survey, and several mechanisms for continuously assessing and ensuring community interests and understanding are reflected in data collection and dissemination efforts.

Participation is central to this roundtable. The organizer and first speaker are social work faculty who will share how the community survey has evolved, including how partners and community members have informed survey procedures, interpretation, and dissemination. The next two presenters are research staff who will share their experiences conducting the survey, and how the process has informed their understanding of the communities in which we work. The final two presenters are community partners who will share their perspectives on the survey and data collection, interpretation, and dissemination processes. Participants will be encouraged to share dissemination strategies from their own work and speakers will encourage frank discussion of the challenges to and benefits of using strategies guided by data justice principles.