The Data Revolution and the Study of Social Inequality: Promise and Perils.
The social sciences are in the midst of a revolution in access to data, as governments and private companies have accumulated vast digital records of rapidly multiplying aspects of our lives and made those records available to researchers. The accessibility and comprehensiveness of the data are unpr...
| Published in: | Social Research Vol. 90; no. 4; pp. 757 - 781 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Johns Hopkins University Press
Winter2023
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=174684411&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 174684411 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0037783X SRE jtl: Social Research issn: 0037783X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter2023 vid: 90 iid: 4 pid: 226 pub: Johns Hopkins University Press artinfo: ui: 174684411 10.1353/sor.2023.a916353 ppf: 757 ppct: 24 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 468KB tig: atl: The Data Revolution and the Study of Social Inequality: Promise and Perils. aug: au: Small, Mario L. su: Social revolution Equality Public records Electronic records Government corporations Research personnel sug: subj: Social revolution Equality Public records Electronic records Government corporations Research personnel ab: The social sciences are in the midst of a revolution in access to data, as governments and private companies have accumulated vast digital records of rapidly multiplying aspects of our lives and made those records available to researchers. The accessibility and comprehensiveness of the data are unprecedented. How will the data revolution affect the study of social inequality? I argue that the speed, breadth, and low cost with which large-scale data can be acquired promise a dramatic transformation in the questions we can answer, but this promise can be undercut by size-induced blindness, the tendency to ignore important limitations amidst a source with billions of data points. The likely consequences for what we know about the social world remain unclear. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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