Scottish National Investment Bank consultation: analysis of responses

3. Profiling the respondents and responses

This section presents information about the respondents and type of responses received by the consultation. It also describes the way in which responses were received and grouped for analysis. In addition, it provides a brief description of the campaign response facilitated by Friends of the Earth Scotland.

How responses were received

Responses for the consultation were received online via the Scottish Government’s Consultation Hub and directly to the Bank’s email inbox.

One campaign group, Friends of the Earth Scotland, co-ordinated responses amongst their members and supporters. These campaign responses were based on a standard text provided by the organisation and were submitted to the Scottish Government’s dedicated Bank email inbox. Respondents were also given the option to edit the standard campaign response and add their own comments.

Ten organisations provided responses in separate documents which were “free-form” and did not necessarily address each question within the consultation. These responses were analysed and included where pertinent to the relevant questions.

Number of responses included

Altogether, 1,443 responses were submitted to the consultation. 40 responses were received through the Consultation Hub, with a further 20 responses submitted to the Bank’s mailbox. The remaining 1,383 responses were submitted through the Friends of the Earth Scotland campaign response. Of these 1,383 responses, 1,360 used a standard template, therefore, for the purposes of analysis this has been captured as 1 response. The remaining 23 have some form of variation, and are analysed separately. Appendix A provides further detail on the analyses of the Friends of the Earth Scotland campaign.

In order to complete the analysis, the identical Friends of the Earth Scotland campaign response and the 23 responses that varied, along with the 20 mailbox responses were uploaded into the Consultation Hub, resulting in a total of 84 responses within the analysis.

Of the 60 responses not including the Friends of the Earth Scotland campaign, 40 were received from organisations and 20 from individuals.

Respondent groupings

For the purposes of analysis, respondents were grouped into five distinct groupings. This was done to highlight the differing opinions between certain sectors. The five groupings are:

• Individual – Friends of the Earth Scotland: This grouping contains the 23 responses from individuals that differed from the standard campaign response.
• Individual – Other: This grouping contains the remaining 20 individual responses.
• Organisation – Friends of the Earth Scotland: This grouping contains the Friends of the Earth Scotland organisation response and the standard campaign response.
• Organisation – Private Sector: This grouping contains 16 responses from organisations within the private sector.
• Organisation – Public and Voluntary Sector: This grouping contains 23 responses from organisations within the public and voluntary sector.

A list of all those organisations that submitted a response is included in Appendix C, along with the grouping assigned for analysis. It should be noted that not all organisational respondents gave permission for the publication of their responses. Where this is the case, responses have still been analysed as part of this report.

Responses to individual questions

As noted above, there were 1,443 responses to the consultation. Valid responses were considered on a question by question basis as summarised in section 5 of this report. However, not all respondents answered all of the questions and not all of the comments made within the response were directly relevant to that question. Some responses also included inappropriate and defamatory language and have not been published.

There was a moderation of the responses received and any which were defamatory have been excluded for the purpose of this analysis. Where individuals provided answers which were not relevant to that specific question, yet closely related to another question within the consultation, these opinions have been captured within the relevant and appropriate questions. It should be noted that not all individual respondents gave permission for the publication of their responses. Where this is the case, responses have still been analysed as part of this report.