Tackling child poverty - progress report 2022 to 2023: annex d - cost of living focus report

Annex A: Methodology

The findings presented in this report are based on an evidence review which sought to understand the impact of the cost of the living crisis on families in low income households.

Research Advisory Group

A Research Advisory Group (RAG) was established for the project to offer and provide insights, advice, feedback and contacts that would help to contribute to quality assurance. This group contained a combination of Scottish Government representatives and external stakeholders. After one initial virtual meeting, the group mainly contributed via email. The group fed into aspects of the review, including:

• Providing, advice and challenge on the research project
• Support in identifying evidence gaps and highlighting evidence sources
• Helping to shape and advise on suitable research outputs and effective strategy for communication and dissemination of research outputs and findings
• Quality assuring research outputs

Evidence search

The evidence review search was completed using Idox and KandE databases. Searches were carried out using keywords to capture the range of factors affected by the cost of living (such as, poverty, low income, living costs, cost of living, wellbeing, fuel insecurity, period insecurity, food insecurity, rent freeze, debt, housing costs, social security, employment) as well as key events (including financial crisis, austerity, COVID-19, cost of living crisis). The key events were used as we were aware the evidence base for the current cost of living crisis would be limited. As a result, we were keen to evidence learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis in order to better understand the societal impacts, challenges and what works to support families through a societal crisis, such as the cost of living crisis. For the searches around the financial crisis and austerity, these were dated back to 2008 while all other key events were dated from 2020 onwards. Further, while the review primarily focused on research from Scotland and the United Kingdom, international evidence^[ix] was included where relevant. This search of databases provided 109 evidence sources.

Further evidence was gathered from stakeholders – which provided 281 sources of evidence. These sources were primarily grey literature. This was gathered from:

• RAG members
• Internal Scottish Government analytical groups
• Wider stakeholders across Scottish Government and UK Government
• A review of stakeholder websites

Inclusion criteria

For inclusion in the review, the evidence source had to:

• Draw upon empirical research exploring the impact of a crisis on families and for those living in poverty and/or in low income households
• Be published between 2008 – present (for austerity and financial crisis related sources) and 2020 – present (for COVID-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis related sources).
• Be an academic publication or grey literature (e.g. working papers, evaluation, government reports).
• Provide insights and understanding to the cost of living crisis and it's impacts for low income families.

Applying this criteria to the evidence base resulted in a greater number of sources drawn from stakeholder groups as opposed to academic literature.