Evaluation, Digital Data and Excess(es) in Health Interventions

Abstract

Evaluation and evaluative design aim to assess the impact of programmes, services and interventions. Underpinned by programme logics and theories of change, evaluation aims to assess intervention effectiveness and to determine an intervention’s capacity to produce the intended change and achieve ‘success’. This chapter is focused on evaluative data and the stories that data and its production make (in)visible and the excess data that gets left behind. I document the ways that health interventions use evidence and the shifts in evaluation towards making sense of the complex contexts and systems where interventions are embedded. Taking digital health interventions as an example of a critical contemporary shift in health, I examine the ways digital data is used to offer ‘evidence’ of interventions and how data excess emerges in evaluative research where potentially useful data is not collected or is ignored as seemingly irrelevant. Here, I situate excess in two ways. The first is in relation to the broadening of data that emerges with new digital technologies and what it promises. The second form of excess is data about social life, complexity and practices, which can get left behind when there is a focus on the ‘digital’. I argue that continuing to interrogate the use(s) of digital data is critical for situating health within complex contexts and social practices of everyday life. Excess offers a useful framing to make sense of data and its (non)uses and the implications of such actions in evaluative research.

Citation

Hanckel, B. (2024), "Evaluation, Digital Data and Excess(es) in Health Interventions", Hendry, N.A. and Richardson, I. (Ed.) Data Excess in Digital Media Research, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 139-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-944-420241010