Context plays a crucial role in shaping research agendas, priorities, and methods. At the Urban Institute, our work predominantly focuses on experiences within the United States, but we recognize that best practices in the US may not produce the same outcomes in international contexts. Contextual factors, such as the resources, history, and politics of a place or time, will influence decisionmaking and can hinder research collaboration.

This seventh volume of the Urban Institute’s Do No Harm project explores best practices for data equity and inclusivity beyond the US borders. How does data collection differ from the US? What kinds of data are and should be collected? How does the resulting information contribute to programmatic and research objectives?

The motivation for creating this volume stems from a need to address global inequities—not just in economic growth or life expectancy, but in the research and data ecosystems that affect how people live, work, and collaborate. The authors of these four essays discuss issues that broaden the conversations about context. They tackle researcher bias, positionality, objectivity, and participatory methods in different global contexts and critically analyze the global power dynamics prevalent in research. And they ask researchers to rethink their priorities, languages, methods, and outcomes from a more global perspective.

In collecting and editing the essays for this volume, we hope to highlight the promise and pitfalls of research agendas and methods in a global context and how the data field can adapt to address inequities where needed. As researchers collaborate across borders to pursue equity in research processes and outcomes, it is imperative that they understand and challenge the forces that create scientific silos. In these essays, each author calls attention to these constraints and propose innovations and workarounds for how researchers can improve their work, both at home and abroad.

We recognize that four essays by no means capture the breadth and variation of the historical and current challenges that data practitioners, researchers, and analysts around the world face when it comes to collecting, analyzing, and communicating data. Furthermore, we acknowledge that this volume does not incorporate the views of people with lived experience in how data has affected them, their families, or their communities. Importantly, we know that research at the Urban Institute is conducted through a US-centric lens with a particular viewpoint—either implicit or explicit—on how data are and should be collected. Still, we hope this volume can build on a conversation and bring together voices from across the globe to move the field of equitable and inclusive data work forward.