Ethics in Administrative Data Research: literature review summary

The report summarises findings from a literature review on ethics in administrative data research. The review focused on recent ethics literature relevant to administrative data research to identify and explore main themes. It was carried out to inform the work of Administrative Data Research (ADR) Wales. ADR Wales is a collaboration of academics at Swansea and Cardiff universities, officials at Welsh Government and staff at the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank based at Swansea University. ADR Wales works in partnership to generate insights from data-based research to provide evidence to support Welsh Government.

Background

Data ethics is difficult to precisely define. It concerns the social, technical and procedural elements of data initiatives and research, including assessing data practices, and their positive and negative impacts. It includes foundational concepts such as accountability, fairness, transparency, public interest, public engagement and trust.

There is a plethora of ethics principles, tools, guidelines and documentation. This can be confusing and difficult to navigate.

Researchers now have access to unprecedented levels of population level data, collected for administrative purposes, that can be linked and analysed to create far reaching insights about how society functions on different levels.

Administrative data research sits within a contemporary social and technical framework of rapid digitalisation. The nature of big data infrastructures makes it very difficult for individuals to retain oversight over research.

Within administrative data research some specific ethical concerns include the limits of data de-identification and low public awareness.

Data ethics is not a static topic and will continue to evolve as more organisations establish their own context specific ethical processes, as technology and society changes and as public awareness increases.

Accountability

Accountability needs to incorporate ‘social accountability’ so that it is not limited to formal oversight processes and includes accountability arising from engaging with people in society.

Transparency

There are many benefits, as well as challenges associated with increasing transparency in administrative data research. It is not enough just to provide information, how this is done is important, by addressing people’s concerns, encouraging participation from diverse groups in society and increasing public understanding about data concepts.

Public interest

Ethical administrative data research has a clearly defined public interest or benefit. However, public interest can be defined in different ways because it is context specific, and it is a subjective and flexible term. Researchers and data owners need to communicate the public interest of research projects broadly and be inclusive in discussions about what the public interest means.

Public engagement 

The literature generally recognises that there needs to be more public engagement on data sharing and data linking research. Researchers should be equipped with the skills to engage and communicate with a broad range of people in society through a range of channels in an accessible and meaningful way.

Social licence

The literature refers to a social licence for data use so that there is a widely understood set of public expectations about how government will use data for research, as this is currently unclear.

The findings above are taken from the main thematic literature review that is selective and exploratory in nature. It aimed to distil themes rather than systematically review all literature on this topic. As such it provides a grounding in ethics topics rather than a specialist or in-depth review.

Further research is needed to understand how administrative data research could be more participatory and involve diverse groups in society, so people have enough understanding to engage with data structures and research processes. This could involve exploring key concepts of data stewardship, fairness, equality and inclusion.

Report author: Yates, E

Views expressed in this report are those of the researchers and not necessarily those of the Welsh Government.

For further information please contact:
Emma Yates
Data Acquisition and Linking for Research
Knowledge and Analytical Services
Welsh Government
Cathays Park
Cardiff
CF10 3NQ

Email: ADRWales@gov.wales

Social research number: 30/2025
Digital ISBN: 978-1-83715-503-3