The UK Covid inquiry has now begun its nationwide “listening” exercise, which will run alongside the formal hearings and expert testimonies over the next three years.
Every Story Matters aims to collect tens of thousands of personal stories from across the country “adding insight about the human impact of the pandemic on the UK population”. This is “integral to the inquiry and ensures that it is informed by people’s experiences”.
The listening project aims to fulfil chair Baroness Hallett’s promise that “those who have suffered will be at the heart of the inquiry.” But this collective exercise in public grief is likely to further entrench the inquiry’s mainstream pro-lockdown narrative by making some stories more equal than others.
The first problem is sample bias. Bereaved families are already overrepresented in the inquiry and it is highly likely that such individuals will be more incentivised to submit their stories, due to the nature of grief and the numerous organisations representing them.
In addition, social scientists have long highlighted the problems with online data collection that proliferated during the pandemic. Others have also shown how easy it is to generate skewed findings from biased samples, whether in vaccine uptake or lockdown opinion polls.
A second problem is that, by definition, a biased sample will generate a biased set of findings. The inquiry claims that it will use these stories to create themed reports that will “be submitted to each relevant investigation as evidence to identify trends and themes…which may illustrate systemic failures.” Personal stories certainly have something to add to the inquiry, but using them to directly shape public investigations, based on what is likely to be a highly biased sample, is deeply problematic.
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