Public Sector Equality Duty - operation review: consultation analysis

3 Consultation Methodology and Analysis

3.1 Introduction

The public consultation on the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) Review ran on the Scottish Government Citizen Space website from 13^th December 2021 to 11^th April 2022.

3.2 Consultation Respondents

A total of 129 responses were received to the consultation and almost all are from organisations. One response was received well beyond the extended deadline for consultation responses (received in July 2022), and this was not included in the analysis. The remainder of this report is based on 128 validated responses, Table 3.1.

N=128.

Organisation respondents can be grouped under the following broad categories, Table 3.2. A majority of organisation respondents are listed authorities i.e. the bodies subject to the Scottish Specific Duties (SSDs) identified in the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (as amended). Equality advocacy groups make up around one-quarter of organisation respondents.

N=123.

EKOS coded all organisation respondents into one of the afore-mentioned four categories. The categorisation was discussed and agreed with the Scottish Government client team.

Appendix A provides details of how organisation respondents have been categorised.

3.3 Analysis

Three-quarters of consultation responses were submitted through the Citizen Space website, with the remainder submitted to the Scottish Government directly (25.0%). Where this was the case, the Scottish Government added these submissions manually to Citizen Space. All responses were moderated by the Scottish Government, Directorate for Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights, Mainstreaming and Strategy Unit. EKOS exported consultation responses from Citizen Space into Microsoft Excel for data cleaning, review, and analysis.

The analysis seeks to identify the most common themes and issues. It does not report on every single point raised in the consultation responses. Equal weighting has been given to all responses. This includes the spectrum of views, from large organisations with a national or UK remit or membership, to individual's viewpoints. This analysis report quotes and paraphrases some of the comments received. This does not indicate that these comments will be acted upon or given greater weight than others.

Where the respondent has given permission for their submission to be published these will be made available on the Citizen Space website (Appendix B).

3.4 Limitations

The following limitations to the public consultation should be noted:

• Respondents to any public consultation or survey are self-selecting, and the responses may not be representative of the population as a whole.
• Some respondents do not answer every question and the detail of responses to consultation questions is also varied. Some, but not all, respondents provide links to published evidence or research in support of points raised.
• Some submissions (e.g. non-Citizen Space responses) provide responses that have not been set out in line with the consultation questions.
• A campaign response was not considered to be a significant issue. It more likely reflects membership bodies (and others) pushing the public consultation out to their members and/or networks. Further, some organisations have worked with others to prepare a joint response in addition to submitting a response from their own organisation.