As part of our Statistics Under Pressure initiative, which explores how statisticians must balance competing demands to feed data into decision-making, we have published a set of five key principles. The principles have been designed to empower statisticians and analysts in confidently making trade-offs when informing decision making in high pressure scenarios.
Our five key considerations have been gleaned from the eight case studies we published earlier in the year, exploring specific scenarios in which data was used to inform decision-making at pace – covering topics ranging from badger culling to economics to health.
The principles can serve as a useful checklist of factors to consider and reflect on in future work. We also hope these principles can be helpful in instances when certain trade-offs may not be suitable – to help reach this conclusion and explain why.
The five detailed principles include lists of questions that should be considered when making trade-offs, with the basic tenets of:
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Understand output purpose and stakeholder needs
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Prioritisation with justification
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Risk mitigation
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Transparent and accessible communication
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Monitor and adapt.
Alongside developing further case studies to illustrate how the themes picked out to date are applicable in a wide range of areas, we will be developing policy recommendations to help ensure that government is set up to allow data and statistics to efficiently and effectively inform decision-making in fast-paced situations.
More detail on the project, the eight case studies and the principles can be found on the Statistics Under Pressure web pages.