Abstract
One of the most significant epidemiological tools for the perceived truth about contemporary Norwegian youth is in Ungdata, Youth Data. This is a continuous online-based survey grounded upon several and varying investigations of youth in Norwegian high schools, now extending to primary schools as well. The knowledge bases, epidemiological practices, technicalities, economic premises for the work and also data publishing is handled by social scientists at Norwegian Social Research, NOVA, located at Oslo Metropolitan University. State bureaucracies, e.g. ministries and directorates, municipalities etc. can ask for investigations and overviews. NOVA has an annual income for running the Youth Data through the Norwegian Directorate of Health of 3,3 mill. NOK (2018). The Youth Data registry has become a leading force in opinions, policies, polities and resource allocations for youth at municipal and state levels for several intended purposes. Based upon NOVA reports, media comments and interviews this article reflects upon some theoretical and methodological approaches to this unique epidemiological tool concerning youth, health and welfare. Questions arise such as: Is epidemiology a taken for granted neutral and objective kind of knowledge? Should there be ethical concerns for youth and their researchers as creators of knowledge, theory and policy – other than the normal ethical rules of scientific conduct?
Highlights
One of the reasons for my interpretation of Ungdata, Youth Data, as the most significant epidemiological tool for the perceived truth about contemporary Norwegian youth is to find in a significant amount of both scientific and more popular texts as well as the space given in different media: “Ungdata is regarded as the most comprehensive source of information on adolescent health and well-being at the municipal and national levels
Douglas Thompson wrote: “If only we lived in an epidemiologist’s utopia – a place where, for every disease we chose to study, we could identify all incidents arising over a specified period in a large and well-defined population and where, for each case, it would be possible to select at random one or more controls who are member of the population at risk and who are in the same stratum of that case
Youth Data may be seen as a mythology of truths about youth
Summary
”Tallenes tale er ikke alt – the voice of the numbers does not say everything” (Director of health Torbjørn Mork 1990:4) (my translation). In this article I consider epidemiology as a science and epidemiologists and statisticians as administrators and developers of epidemiological scientific data, facts and perceived truths. Major areas of epidemiological studies include disease causation and surveillance, disease transmission and screening, disease outbreak investigations, forensic or occupational epidemiology, biomonitoring, comparisons of treatments and effects such as comparing clinical trials in double blind tests etc Some of these methodological tools are widely known in the social sciences. There are numerous examples of this in our everyday life such as how income-based epidemiology is linking up to politics, e.g. the distribution of welfare goods in the population Another example is the construction of tipping points such as self-enforcing creation of opinions, where simple truths push the complex ones aside, e.g. population polls on voting behaviour. It is an example of control and discipline history repeated, as I will come back to
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