The Role of Digital Data on Citizens in Social Work Research: A Literature Review

This article presents a scoping review of the existing research on the use of digital data in social work. This review focuses on research that includes empirical investigations of digital data on citizens in social work practices. The purpose of this review is to map the emerging field of research and contribute knowledge of the role of digital data on citizens in social work. This review includes twenty-eight articles published between 2013 and 2020, and concludes that data pervade almost every aspect of social work and that there is a variety of research on the use of data in social work. However, detailed analyses of data that describe and conceptualise the production, circulation and utilisation of data are few. In consequence, this article introduces and discusses concepts from other data-laden fields of research, and calls for further research that addresses the challenges presented by digital data used in social work. Data and the datafication of society are intensifying, and the advantages and disadvantages of data and datafication are widely debated. Data already play a significant role in social work practices in contemporary welfare societies. For instance, this development promises to identify vulnerable children, and to help to deliver better quality care and efficient social work practices. However, it may also lead to opacity, alienation and increased inequality. This review article focuses on the role of data on citizens used in social work research, and covers over a thousand research articles published between 2013 and 2020. Among other things, it describes who is represented by the data, and how; how data are used, and the implications of data for social work. It concludes that there is a dawning interest in the field of social work research, but also that the field may benefit from more in-depth empirical analyses of how data are generated, processed and used. Lastly, the article discuss other fields and concepts that may contribute to the field of social work research on data.