Observing Ibero-American social observatories

Abstract

This study aims to analyze and describe Ibero-American social observatories under the approach proposed by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. It makes up the first stage of a doctoral thesis. The analysis of social observatories of the Ibero-American community as digital information resources provides insights into their social function and impact on the societies to which they belong. This is a qualitative and descriptive study, in which qualitative content analysis is carried out. As a multiple case study, 21 Ibero-American social observatories were chosen to be analyzed according to three essential criteria: the social observatory had to belong to the Ibero-American community, it had to monitor issues related to social development and it had to be among the top ten results of simple Google search. We analyzed in detail the seven theoretical categories proposed by the adopted approach: name, history, objectives, members, funding, processes, outputs and impact. The results bring to light a set of issues that contribute to the understanding of the work done by the social observatories in that region, such as, for example, the information services/products they provide as they fulfill their mission. The results also show conceptions related to the structure, to the content and to the typology of processes found in those social observatories.