The Evaluation of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025

4. Final Progress Update

As of December 2025, over half of the 45 actions in the Strategy have been completed and the majority of the remaining have been progressed well^[1]. Annex A provides a more detailed overview of the action status and final update as of 2025.

4.1 Final Action Status

29 actions have been completed.

Five actions are still marked as ‘ongoing’. Work will continue on all five actions past the life of this Strategy due to delays or challenges in progressing the work in the original timeframe.

Nine actions are marked as delayed. Delays remain largely due to teams considering alternative methods to collecting and analysing data, as well as some staffing and capacity issues. All action leads plan to continue the action activities past the life of the Strategy.

No actions are marked as ‘not yet started’. All actions had been started by January 2025.

Two actions have been marked as ‘no longer feasible’. This category was approved by the EDIP Board in October 2024 and applied to actions where the original intention of the action was no longer possible due to the lack of an appropriate dataset. As stated in the Interim Review, these actions were revisited as part of the evaluation process.

4.2 Action Categories

Action categories were created mid-way through the Strategy to better understand the high-level goals that actions were working towards and see more clearly how this would feed into the Principles and overall Vision of the Strategy. The categories listed below show the actions status at the close of the Strategy.

Category 1: Establishing processes (e.g. with stakeholders) to enable more equality data collection

This category includes actions where lead analysts were working with other analysts, policymakers, external organisations, data collectors or working groups to enable or test the feasibility of more equality data collection. In total, 13 actions fall under this category:

• six actions were completed, with most achieving their original aim. A few of these actions required feasibility testing or methodological changes which shaped how their were able to complete their action.
• four have made partial progress but are still ongoing past the lifetime of the Strategy.

• three are delayed due to external constraints.

Enhancing equality data collection / collection of new equality data in existing datasets.

This category includes actions that were aiming to improve the range of equality data collected as part of existing datasets. In total, seven actions fall under this category:

• two actions were completed, both achieving their original aims.
• four are delayed, largely due to external dependencies or changes in data collection methods.
• one is marked as no longer feasible, due to the required survey being paused for external reasons unrelated to the Strategy. However, the survey has now resumed and data collection began in Autumn 2025, with expected publication in summer 2026. The review of the dataset for this action was not influenced by the Equality Evidence Strategy.

Enhancing analysis of equality data

This category includes actions that conducted further or new analysis of equality variables already collected, this includes intersectional analysis. In total, 12 actions fall under this category:

• nine actions were completed, achieving their goals set out at the start of the Strategy.
• one is still ongoing, however the action holder was still able to progress their action to a large extent without needing to change their original methodology.
• two are delayed, due to challenges with carrying out analysis and prioritising the action against other team demands.

Enhancing reporting or publication of equality data collected

This category includes actions that aimed to report equality data breakdowns collected in new formats or in regular publications to ensure data is accessible to others. In total, 10 actions fall under this category:

• nine actions were completed, all were able to achieve their original goals with no changes to methodology required.
• one was marked as no longer feasible, as work depended on a specific survey question to produce additional equality breakdowns. This question was discontinued in the relevant survey and, although other possibilities were explored, an appropriate replacement could not be found.

Establishing a new dataset

This category includes actions that aimed to establish a new dataset. In total, two actions fall under this category, both of which have been completed as originally intended. Overall, this action had the highest completion rate compared to other categories and the data were being used by policymakers, supporting other teams and individuals to use the data, and creating awareness of equality experiences of topic aeras.

Continuation of specific activities

This category includes actions that aimed to continue routine publication of their equality data. One action fell under this category, which was completed as originally intended.

4.3 Successes and Challenges

During the evaluation period, lead analysts delivering one or more actions were asked for their reflections of the Strategy over the past 3 years. The responses have been analysed and findings grouped to determine successes and challenges, covering real and expected impacts, with examples of each shown below^[2].

Successes

• Expectations: the majority of action holders were able to anticipate what was required or achievable to complete their action when setting out their goals in 2022.
• Course Correcting: at the interim stage of the Strategy, several actions required methodological changes, for example using alternative datasets, technical issues, facing delays or adding in additional steps for quality assurance. This flexibility in approach allowed action holders to meet their original aims despite facing obstacles. For example, one action lead, who was unable to complete their goal as the equality data was being published elsewhere, felt it was a better use of time and resources to signpost to existing publications rather than duplicate work, and to focus instead on engaging with stakeholders to identify any remaining or emerging needs.
• Refocusing: a number of action holders had to shift the focus of their original goal part-way through delivery, refining what could be collected or produced for meaningful use. This includes action holders who increased the number of equality characteristics collected or published, even if they could not collect all characteristics as originally intended. For example, one action holder had intentions to collect more data across a range of equality characteristics, but in the end focused primarily on the characteristic of sex as this became a key priority to progress another action in the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025.
• Standardisation: a number of action holders saw improvements to the standardisation of data. For example, a working group that consisted of Scottish Government officials and representatives from external organisations encouraged use of a standard set of ethnicity and race questions to allow comparisons across data collections, which has now been adopted across several external organisations.
• Impact in policy making: some action holders reported that their data have been used in, or is expected to be used in, policy work and that improvements to data has improved policymakers understanding of inequalities. This includes data being used in policy strategies, for ministerial briefings, and equality impact assessments. For example, one action has resulted in a better understanding of the broader data landscape relating to sex, gender and health. This improved insight has helped shape the next stage of policy planning, including identifying priority areas for action and highlighting where additional data collection or evidence development is needed. Further improvements to this data landscape will also lead to improvements to monitoring and evaluation of future policy work.
• Engagement with external stakeholders: a few action holders identified that their action have led to further conversations with external stakeholders to maximise future data use. This included further discussions with stakeholders to clarify data needs, capabilities, and uses. For example, one action, focused on data and evidence gathering, resulted in engagement with external stakeholders to share findings. This led to a strengthened shared understanding of the available evidence and prompted discussion about potential future focuses for new data and evidence. These ongoing discussions ensure that plans for addressing evidence gaps are shaped collaboratively.
• Emphasising importance and collective responsibility: A number of action holders reported that their action activities have increased visibility and highlighted the importance of equality and intersectional evidence contributing to a ‘collective responsibility’ to improve equality collection, analysis and use. This includes Scottish Government analysts and external organisations improving their own, or encouraging others to improve, equality analysis collection and reporting. For example, one action was focused on improving equality breakdowns in a series of analytical reports alongside annual reporting of updates to assess how well a particular policy was doing. These reports examined equality and intersectional characteristics, for example more detailed gender-focused insights, as well as highlighting gaps in the data. Sharing these findings with local authorities has encouraged efforts to collect more data from those impacted by the policy. The action holders plan to continue this reporting and, inspired by their equalities reports, explore further insights from the data.
• Collaboration and knowledge sharing: action holders reported that working directly with equality analysts improved their understanding of how to produce and use equality and intersectional evidence. Teams responsible for producing equality data also noted increased awareness and use of their data upon publication through helping others better understand experiences across different characteristics. For example, one action resulted in collaborative work between core Scottish Government and the National Records of Scotland analysts to produce bespoke reports using Scotland’s Census 2022 data.
• Meeting and identifying new data user needs: a number of action holders mentioned that their action have led to increased access to available equality and intersectional analysis for users, which has allowed them to meet and identify further user needs. For example, one action holder met the goal of their action by producing new statistics for a particular education-based policy area. This data becoming available has led to further requests from data users for the same data to be collected and produced for another education-based policy area.
• Ongoing commitment: action holders for all ongoing and delayed actions reported continuing their action work past the life of the Strategy, showing an ongoing commitment to improving equality evidence. This includes, producing the same data or exploring new data for publication, exploring the feasibility or possibility of continuing to produce the same data, adding in new data to fill identified gaps, and work with data users to understand emerging needs. For example, one action holder will continue to publish statistics regularly and will be working with external stakeholders to review the publication content and expand on time series analysis for further use.

Challenges

• Limited identified impacts: action holders did note that impact is difficult to measure as the new datasets and publications are far reaching and will likely have longer-term impact in policymaking, or activities are still ongoing or delayed and impact cannot be seen at this stage. In addition, one action was completed early on in the Strategy’s lifetime and the action holder reflected that short-term impact was hard to recall at the evaluation stage.
• External barriers: One barrier identified to progress, largely for delayed actions, was related to available resources for data collectors outside of Scottish Government, which meant obtaining complete information was limited or delayed. For example, while some technical improvements were made to improve data completeness, a number of external factors related to available resources for data collectors, external platforms and the range of respondents created barriers for one action holder to obtain timely and complete datasets meaning impact could not be directly measured.
• Changes to methodology: while a number of action holders were able to complete their goal by the end of the Strategy through ‘course correcting’ and adapting, a few actions reported that changes to methodology still posed barriers to completion. For example, one action reported that progress was limited due to a change in data collection methods from in-person to online, which meant the original goal of the action could not be fully achieved and further consideration is required to find an alternative solution.
• Limited need or use of data: action holders reflected that, in some instances, there was limited impact due to the lack of need or use of the data. This included actions where the data was also produced by another data source and therefore duplication may minimise use, the data was not used as expected as it did not meet stakeholders expectations, or a lack of interest in the data meant the action became a lower priority for the team. For example, one action was unable to achieve their action as originally intended due to a review mid-way through the process, where a decision was made by policy and stakeholders that there was no current need to publish new research at the time. However, the action holder does report that this will be reviewed mid-2026 to re-assess whether needs have changed.
• Staffing: A couple of actions reflected that staffing and resource issues within teams caused barriers to complete action activities.
• No Longer Feasible: Not all actions were able to carry out their action as planned. For example, for one action holder, the original action depended on a specific survey question to produce additional equality breakdowns. This question was discontinued in the relevant survey and, although other possibilities were explored, an appropriate replacement could not be found meaning the action could no longer be delivered.

Learnings from these successes and challenges have been incorporated into the Reflections and Transferable Lessons chapter along with other insights gained from the evaluation activities.