How can digital trace data (DTD) and survey data enhance each other?
> Understanding (Offline/Online) Society: Linking Survey and Digital Trace Data
Summary
Digital trace data (DTD) and survey data, when linked together, become greater than the sum of their parts. DTD data is often lacking in demographic information which makes it difficult to understand who is represented, but when linked to survey data we can address the issue of representation. We can also explore issues around identity play and presentation of the virtual self. How does the biography of an online account accord or differ with what an individual responded on a survey?
DTD can also enhance data collected through surveys. It can fill in time gaps between waves of a data collection exercise, perhaps picking up on fluctuations in employment trajectories, mental health, or political allegiances. Surveys collect data using a focused set of standardized questions, whilst DTD provide a greater breadth of information on attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that a questionnaire might not have collected. Finally, much DTD have a network element to them allowing us to situation the individual within a web of wider social connections from who is following who on Twitter, through to who endorses your skills on LinkedIn.
As part of this project, we are approaching these possibilities from multiple angles. We’re interested in how people talk about work and employment, and we want to see if what respondents report in a survey matches with how they present their job online. We’re also interested in how offline social factors influence online behaviour, and how the amount of content a user produces might be associated with their demographic characteristics.
Outputs
2024
Presentation: How can digital trace data and survey data enhance each other? (Slides 1) (Slides 2) (Video)
2022
Presentation: Linking survey and social media data in Understanding Society (pdf)
2021
Paper: Linking Twitter and survey data: Asymmetry in quantity and its impact
Presentation: Linking survey and social media data in Understanding Society
Presentation: Linking Twitter and Survey Data: Quantity and its Impact
2020
Paper: Linking Survey and Social Media Data (pdf)
2019
Presentation: Linking Survey and Social Media data (pdf)
2017
Book chapter: Social science 'Lite'? Deriving demographic proxies from Twitter
2015
2013
Paper: Knowing the Tweeters: Deriving Sociologically Relevant Demographics from Twitter