Contexts, processes and implications of social care data. V 1.0.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring contexts, processes and implications of social care data creation, coding and linkage - an ethnographic study. V 1.0.
IRAS ID
173189
Contact name
Miles D Witham
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Dundee
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 30 days
Research summary
Health and social care integration is a Scottish Government priority to improve services for people who access health and social care facilities (Scottish Government, NHS 2020 Vision, 2013). Combining health and social care records is considered key to delivering this strategy. However, projects conducted to date have highlight limitations which hamper the potential that data linkage could offer around health and social care systems and service quality.
Insufficient work has been performed to formally evaluate social care data whereas direct comparison of health care sectors reveals extensive literature. This is in addition to rigorous examination of the NHS National Programme for Information Technology and leaves social care scrutiny and understanding regrettably lacking. A much deeper sense of how data are collected, coded and used in everyday settings is required in order to understand social care processes and practices. These understandings will in turn help to capitalize on the capacity of such data to provide robust and meaningful results.
This project is the first in a series of work packages to understand the wider context of health and social care data linkage across the two contexts and also data coding processes of routinely collected social care information. Ethnographic research incorporating observations, interviews and documentary analysis will be conducted within NHS Tayside, Fife and Forth Valley and associated District Councils. An examination of the entire social care data recording process will be performed with a view to obtaining an in-depth awareness of attitudes and beliefs to data linking, coding decision making and meaning.
Information garnered will help clarify attitudes and beliefs expressed by Health Care and Social Work professionals. A thorough grasp of perceived understandings, quality and limitations of social care data recording practices will also be achieved. Analysis will enable statistical modelling (to be conducted in a later work package) to recognise and measure social care inequalities in order to improve health and social care systems and service quality.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 2
REC reference
15/ES/0117
Date of REC Opinion
9 Oct 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion