Four Principles of Big Data Practice for Effective Child Welfare Decision Making

Large administrative data systems are powerful tools that can aid child welfare decision making by allowing populations, trends, and risks to children to be described. But realizing the value that this “big data” can bring to improving the lives of children and their families requires one to (a) start the process by asking a question, (b) take a disciplined approach to converting data to evidence, (c) commit to the cyclical process of improvement using evidence, and (d) arrange and analyze the data in ways that maximize evidence yield. This article describes how these four principles can help agencies and researchers use big data wisely and in accordance with scientific standards as an instrument to generate evidence that fuels the cycle of continuous quality improvement.