Description
Data are a critical tool for global health governance structures. Whilst the politics of indicators has been well analysed, there has been little interrogation of the ways in which questions are negotiated and knowledge produced in the process of administering surveys themselves. Data collectors are rarely included in any analysis of surveys and quantification, despite being the frontline of data production. This paper draws on interviews with global health experts (n=22) and from a case study of sexual and reproductive health governance in Ghana in which statisticians and data collectors were interviewed (n=32). Understanding their experiences exposes the disconnects between the macro and micro politics of survey instrument design, development, and funding, as well as the role of surveys as treatments, rather than simply neutral fact-finding missions. Treatment includes knowledge exchanges between data collectors and participants, as well as the effects of asking specific questions and making others invisible. This paper illustrates how data are shaped not only by questions developed in the Global North but through negotiation, conversation, and collaboration between data collectors and respondents. It exposes how ‘cleaned’ datapoints make invisible critical details and insights that offer essential information for global health.
