Weak Data: The Social Biography of a Measurement Instrument and How It Failed to Ensure Accountability in Home Care.

Abstract

Contemporary health and social care is saturated by processes of datafication. In many cases, these processes are nested within an ostensibly simple logic of accountability: Define a politically and morally desirable goal, then measure the level of achievement. This logic has come to permeate public health initiatives globally and today it operates in most health care systems in various ways. We explore here a particular instantiation of the logic associated with the introduction of a measurement instrument used in Danish home care. Building on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and analysis of policy documents, we show how the instigated processes of datafication—despite hopeful political claims—erode care levels and disempower older people. We believe that these findings can be of relevance for other settings that subscribe to the same accountability logic and to similar forms of measurement instruments.