Funding opportunity: Evaluating the benefits, costs and utility of synthetic data

Please note: This funding opportunity has now closed.

Applications are open for funding for three complementary projects to explore the use of synthetic data. Successful applicants will evaluate the benefits, costs and utility of low-fidelity synthetic versions of securely held datasets from the perspective of different stakeholder groups.  

This funding opportunity is a joint initiative from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)’s Data & Infrastructure Programme and ADR UK and is a revised version of a call run earlier this year.  

To find out more about the opportunity, watch the recording of our applicant webinar.

Applications will close on 26 October 2023. 

Projects will begin in early March 2024 and last for 12 months. 

Background 

The vision of this funding opportunity is to collect evidence and insights on the benefits, costs and utility of low-fidelity synthetic data from the perspective of three stakeholder groups. 

Low-fidelity synthetic data is defined as artificial data that has been created to reflect the format of the original data (its layout and the types of information it contains) but without preserving any relationships between variables. This means it contains no data about real individuals. It can be generated quickly and can be used for training and to develop and test code.  

The three complementary projects funded by this opportunity will consider synthetic data from the perspectives of: 

1. researchers – the effect of having synthetic data available
2. data owners and trusted research environments – the benefits, costs and mechanisms for providing synthetic data
3. the public – their understanding of and attitudes towards synthetic data. 

The evidence and insights from these projects will inform recommendations for operationalising scaled production and sharing of synthetic data in a way that is efficient and acceptable to the public, data owners and to researchers.  

Funding and scope 

The total funding available across the three projects is £375,000 for 12 months. The ESRC and ADR UK will fund 80% of the full economic cost (up to £300,000 total).  

The funding will be divided into roughly equal portions to support the three complementary projects. They are:  

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Project 1:  Benefits, costs and utility of low-fidelity synthetic data for researchers 

The grant holder will evaluate the impact of these (and other) low-fidelity synthetic datasets on researchers’ experiences of carrying out research using secure data 

Project 2:  Costs and benefits of low-fidelity synthetic data for data owners and trusted research environments 

The grant holder will: 

• Evaluate the broad set of costs to data owners and trusted research environments associated with creating low-fidelity synthetic data, using different models 
• Evaluate the utility of different models for sharing synthetic data 
• Evaluate any improvements in efficiency for data owners and trusted research environments when synthetic data is available. 

Project 3:  Public understanding of and attitudes towards low-fidelity synthetic data 

The grant holder will design and run a public consultation on understanding of and attitudes towards synthetic data. 

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