Long term conditions framework: consultation analysis

Appendix A: Responses and analysis

A total of 384 responses were received to the consultation.

The data review and cleaning process identified 12 individual and organisation respondents who had each submitted duplicate responses. To avoid over-representing these individuals and organisations in the analysis:

• either one response for each individual and organisation was removed where the duplicate responses were identical
• or where responses were similar duplicate responses were combined into a composite submission for each individual or organisation

Further, one blank response was removed as this did not contain any responses to the consultation questions.

A total of 13 responses were therefore removed.

This means that a total of 371 validated responses have been included in the final analysis.

No campaign responses were identified. There were a very small number of responses with partial similar wording. This likely reflects organisations promoting the consultation within their community and through their networks, sharing their suggested responses and key messages, and/or posing questions to help others consider and respond to the consultation.

All responses to the public consultation were moderated by Scottish Government officials in the Long Term Conditions Strategy Unit to ensure they were genuine responses to the consultation and specific information was redacted to ensure responses could not identify any individuals. This process included screening for offensive or discriminatory language which might require redaction prior to publication, or if there was a response which was completely irrelevant to the consultation. No responses have been excluded from the consultation analysis for either of these reasons.

EKOS then exported consultation responses from Citizen Space into Microsoft Excel for data management and cleaning. Where responses were submitted in another format, Scottish Government officials moderated these prior to uploading the documents to Citizen Space.

In Excel, EKOS conducted an initial readthrough and review of responses to each question – this gave a nuanced understanding of the different perspectives presented in the responses. Following this initial readthrough and review, EKOS formulated various themes and coded each response into one or more themes.

The analysis gave equal weight to all responses, regardless of whether they were submitted by individuals or organisations. The analysis has sought to identify the most common themes and issues. It does not report on every single or specific point raised.

The consultation paper structure allowed respondents to answer questions independently, in recognition that respondents may answer some questions without expressing views on others. There was some repetition of views expressed across the question set. Judgement was applied to determine the most appropriate placement for each theme within the report.