Understanding the Fabric of Society
Corinna Elsenbroich 10 October 2024
We know that social contacts make a big difference to our lives. Whom we interact with and relate to influences behaviours, happiness, economic participation and life expectancy, as well as structuring family dynamics, community cohesion and the wider society. But social science has little representative data about who interacts with whom in the UK or the implications of those interactions. Social Ties, Relationships, Interactions and Knowledge Exchange (STRIKE) is about changing this situation by developing a specification for a data collection infrastructure for social contact data.
Those that went to work
Remember Covid-19? Well, who doesn’t . . . On the 27th of March 2020 citizens of the UK were asked to stay at home and avoid “social contacts”. This became known as “social distancing” and we went through iterations of staying at home completely (bar one hour exercise outside), to meeting in sets of two or three outside, to “social bubbles” where people could choose a particular set they were “bubbling up” with and which they were then allowed to socialise with. But of course, not everybody could stay at home. Frontline health and emergency services staff went to work, staff in shops went to work, public transport was still running, teachers still went to work for key worker children, etc. The CoMIX survey collected this co-location contact data to estimate epidemic spread.
Those that stayed at home
The pandemic has also brought the biggest disruption to social contacts and interactions and the long-term consequences of this disruption are hard to envisage or estimate. In the aftermath of the pandemic, social interactions have undergone longer term change (e.g., increased home working and online interactions) and it is unclear what the implications are for individuals, communities, and society.
People were suddenly thrown into nuclear families without seeing their friends, couples were split if not cohabiting, some separated parents could no longer see their children. We also lost a whole host of completely normal small social interactions, the smile to another person on the escalator, the chat about the weather at the bus stop, sharing life stories over a pint with a stranger in a pub.
Connecting without Infecting
Whilst the consequences of this “physical distancing” are not clear yet, the possibility of connecting online with our friends and family meant that at least we could stay somewhat connected socially. People did concerts, pub quizzes, murder mystery evenings online, partly to allow for the social to survive and partly to sponsor industries and venues that were struggling to survive. The immediate danger of Covid-19 has been reduced dramatically with the population having fairly good resistance due to vaccination and past infection. However, the practices of working from home and online meetings has led to a long term reduction of face-to-face meetings. It is not clear whether or when this trend will reverse.
But who connects with who – and how?
Although we all lived through the pandemic and are now interacting in the aftermath, we still do not know who meets who. And we still do not know what these more ephemeral connections mean in our lives, although many of us will have realised how odd it is to not come into contact with strangers anymore. For the CoMIX study, explanations for the differences in infection rates for different ethic and socio-economic groups could only be stipulated (e.g. over representation within front line services and thus at higher risk of infection), but getting reliable data, disaggregated by age, gender, ethnicity or social class is difficult. Understanding the meaning of the quick chat with the cashier or the shared experience of a delayed train might be even more difficult.
To better understand the social fabric woven from contacts, interactions and relationships, what is needed is representative data across the UK population to understand who connects to whom and the roles social interactions play for people. Such data on social interactions will help us understand social connections and connectivity across a range of socio-economic factors, how people understand and experience social connections and what purpose, value or meaning they attach to social interactions of many different kinds (e.g. online vs face-to-face). This understanding will help with answering questions about wellbeing and loneliness, social capital and social exclusion, and changes to patterns of social connectivity and isolation. The resulting data will ensure policy interventions are designed to leverage our new understanding of social connections to improve life for individuals, communities and society as a whole. For example, in the next epidemic, to include appropriate strategies to mitigate not just virus spread but also mental health and social harms.
The problems of social contact data collection
Social connection, interaction and network data are, however, challenging to collect. People might be reluctant to share contact information, leading to social desirability and non-response bias, and the cognitive burden of recording all social interactions might lead to participant boredom or withdrawal. Recent technologies, like apps and sensors when used to collect social interaction data, can be seen as intrusive and overbearing. The STRIKE project will scope recent developments in the online collection of time-use data, applying methodological innovation to collect information on online and face- to-face social contacts and the places and events where interactions occur.
Overcoming Barriers
STRIKE will identify and scope what is needed to build a national picture of social interactions in the UK. We will develop a specification of an infrastructure for generating a nationally representative, characteristics sensitive, socially meaningful, non-intrusive, ethically sound, data user relevant, methodologically robust and adaptable dataset of social connections. We will consider ethical questions surrounding connections data, for example whether connections can be brought into the research without explicit consent to participate, as well as the safety and security of the collected data, which could potentially be exploited by malicious actors for commercial gain. And we will make sure the data will be useful by working closely with stakeholders and data users.