From Hearing to Doing: Tracing the Gaps in Familiarity, Competency, and Use of Big Data Among Türkiye’s Social Scientists

This study investigates how academics in Türkiye’s social sciences engage with big data by examining their familiarity, competency, and actual use. Drawing on a large-scale web survey of 3,606 academics, we analyze how individual backgrounds, methodological orientations, and institutional environments relate to engagement with big data. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses reveal that methodological proximity to quantitative research, openness to innovation, and institutional exposure through departmental curricula are key drivers of competency and use. Conversely, structural divides, such as inequalities between universities and socio-economic development levels, appear to affect familiarity more than deeper engagement. Theoretically, the study integrates frameworks including epistemic cultures, pedagogic device theory, diffusion of innovations, and technology acceptance models to contextualize the findings. This research contributes to the limited empirical literature on big data adaptation among social scientists outside the Global North and address structural, curricular, and attitudinal barriers and approaches for broader adoption in Türkiye's social research methodology.