Organ and tissue donation and transplantation: analysis of consultation responses

2.Responses and respondents

2.1 This chapter presents information about the respondents and types of responses received in the consultation.

The responses

2.2 Altogether, 836 responses were received to the consultation. One response to the consultation took the form of a petition with 18,500 signatures. The text of this petition has been included in the analysis as a single response ^[3] . Twelve respondents submitted two responses - these multiple responses were amalgamated into a single composite response for each of these respondents. Thus the analysis presented in this report is based on 824 responses.

The respondents

2.3 Respondents were asked to specify whether they were submitting their response as an individual, or on behalf of an organisation or group. The vast majority of respondents were individuals (n=778; 94%). (See Table 2.1.)

Table 2.1: Types of respondent

* Percentages do not total 100% due to rounding.

2.4 Table 2.2 below provides further detail about the organisational respondents.

Table 2.2: Organisational respondents

2.5 The largest group of organisational respondents were NHS and local authority organisations, accounting for almost a third of organisations (31%; 14 out of 45). Organisational respondents also included: (i) professional (medical, scientific and legal) organisations and regulatory bodies of various types; (ii) charities and voluntary sector organisations (mainly those operating in the health field with remits including fundraising, research, information provision and patient support and representation); and (iii) faith groups. A complete list of the 45 organisational / group respondents is shown in Annex 1 of this report.

Response rates

2.6 As noted in Chapter 1, not all respondents answered all the consultation questions. Response rates were higher for the closed questions, and most of these were completed by over 94% of respondents. Response rates for open questions were lower, ranging from 74% (for Question 7) to 8% (for Question 12). Note, however, that some questions (including Question 12) were intended to be answered by only a sub-group of respondents. Specifically, respondents who answered a closed question in a particular way were, in some cases, asked for further information about their views. Thus, the response rates for these types of follow-up questions are lower than for other open questions in the questionnaire.

2.7 Annex 2 of this report provides further details about the response rates for each of the consultation questions.