How has social science responded to the coronavirus crisis?
Nathan Matias and Alex Leavitt have compiled a tracker of more than 230 social science projects (as of 18 April 2020). I’ve done some work to classify them. Obviously its a voluntary database, other databases exist, and it won’t be representative — but it gives us some hints. Here’s what I saw:
- Social scientists have responded fast.
- The Global South is completely invisible
- So many surveys!
UPDATE: I have also included some geographic data from GovLab’s #Data4Covid19 tracker’s 175 data science projects. If you know of more trackers, I’d be glad to add them to this analysis.
Social scientists have responded fast.
Of more than 230 projects, 29 have already been published, are under review or a draft is available! That’s remarkably fast work. In GovLab’s tracker, there are 175 more projects!
They’ve done so across a remarkable range of topics — though perhaps not quite so many politically-focused projects as I might like.
The Global South is completely invisible
There is just one project in this database that specifically looks at countries in Africa. Just two projects that specifically look at countries in South America. There are a few more that study multiple places, including Global South countries, but these ratios are awful!
Based on this data, developing countries won’t receive anything like the sort of tailored advice from scholars that rich countries are going to benefit from. I hope we can all work to correct that, and soon!
GovLab’s #Data4Covid19 data science tracker shows similar — if very slightly happier — trends. No projects at all in MENA, 2 in South Asia, and 7 each in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa — against 35 in the US and 46 in Europe & Central Asia.
So many surveys
An awful lot of people have plumped for online (non-experimental) surveys. That seems very understandable. But it seems like there should be room for plenty of other methods. If you’re considering launching a project, check out this fantastic guide to adjusting methods for online, and consider doing something else.
