Coronavirus (COVID-19): framework for decision making - overview of public engagement

Annex C: Platform engagement - quantitative overview

The following annex provides a quantitative summary of user engagement on the platform between 5 and 11 May 2020.

Headline figures

4254 ideas were submitted to the platform. 132 ideas were rejected due to being in breach of the moderation policy and 4122 ideas were published on the site. 17,966 comments were posted. These came from 11,692 registered users, of whom 3,274 submitted ideas. Members of the public also engaged with the Scottish Government by email and 136 emails received during the challenge were also included in the analysis.

Engagement by topic - topic tags, comments, and ratings

The following tables show the total number of comments and ratings for each 'topic tag,' ordered by chapter and sub-themes within the report. This is to provide a sense of the level of engagement around different topics across the report.

'Topic tags' were assigned by researchers and moderators to the idea threads created by contributors (for example, if a contributor raised an idea about dental health, the tag 'dental health' would be applied). These 'tags' formed the basis of a thematic coding framework which allowed researchers to structure an analysis of the responses.

These figures, detailing the number of comments and ratings by 'tag,' offer a high-level outline of the scale of discussion and engagement for individual subjects. For example, they can be used to demonstrate that high numbers of respondents engaged - via either a written comment or rating (out of 5 stars) - with subjects of 'outdoor activities,' 'social contact,' and 'business re-opening.'

Note: As 'topic tags' were used to code idea threads by theme only, the values in these tables cannot be used to gauge any sense of agreement or disagreement on a particular subject. The values in this table can be interpreted to gauge the scale of engagement alone.

When an ideas thread contained a number of different concepts, multiple 'topic tags' were applied by researchers to the same thread (for example, an ideas thread which contained a multi-theme discussion could be assigned tags on 'exercise,' 'mental health' and 'social contact' at the same time).

As a result, the number of comments and ratings per 'topic tag' provided in this set of tables should not be added together to identify overall numbers of engagement by theme.