Interviews & focus groups
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We carried out 52 focus groups and interviews with 112 participants between October 2020 – July 2021. Each focus group or interview involved discussing examples of public sector data uses with participants. Participants were shown two or three examples which were grouped into four themes.
We focused on data uses in welfare, media and health, producing accounts and visualisations of six specific data uses. To produce accounts of data uses in welfare and media, we partnered with the government Department for Welfare and Pensions (DWP) and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). For health, we produced an account of a data use based on information in the public domain, and another account based on research that one of us, Itzelle Medina-Perea, had undertaken into National Health Service (NHS) data flows. Find out more about the data uses we talked about on our Data Uses page.
We asked the same general opening and closing questions in all interviews and focus groups. We also asked specific questions relating to the particular theme on which the interview or focus group was focused. Each theme was discussed in roughly 1/4 of our interviews and focus groups. Click on the links below to read the opening and closing, or theme-related, questions that we asked.