Scottish Government People's Panel 2026-27 Event 2: Trust in Government

4 Annexes

4.1 Annex A: Methodology and ethics

This section provides a summary of the methodology used for the recruitment of the People’s Panel, the approach to working with participants, and the analysis. A comprehensive report covering methodology and participation will be published at the end of the project in 2027.

Recruitment

The Scottish Government People’s Panel is a research panel consisting of 40 members of the public, plus a group of reserves, recruited through a democratic ‘random lottery’ approach.

The Panel has been designed to reflect the diversity of Scotland’s population in terms of gender, age, geographic spread, socio‑economic background, ethnicity, disability, and range of political views – as far as is possible within the limitations of the sample size.

The Scottish Government commissioned the Sortition Foundation,^[14] a not-for-profit organisation specialising in democratic lottery recruitment for deliberative processes, to recruit members for the Panel. Recruitment followed a two-stage process designed to produce a panel broadly representative of Scotland’s adult population. In the first stage, households from across Scotland were randomly selected and invited to register their interest in taking part. In the second stage, participants were selected from the pool of registrants through a stratified random selection process that sought to achieve agreed targets across demographic and attitudinal characteristics. These included age, gender, ethnicity, disability status, educational qualifications, occupation, geography and political attitudes. Most targets were based on the latest Scottish Census data, while political attitude targets were derived from contemporary public opinion survey data.

The Sortition Foundation randomly selected 8,000 addresses from the Royal Mail Postal Address File (PAF) for residential addresses in Scotland. To help address known inequalities in participation, the sample was weighted towards addresses in more deprived areas. Specifically, 20% of invitations were sent to addresses in postcodes within Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) deciles 1-3, while the remaining 80% were selected at random from across Scotland (including proportionately to addresses in deciles 1-3). Selected households received an invitation pack and individuals were invited to register interest in participating online or via a freephone service. A total of 376 people registered, representing a response rate of 4.7% of the 8,000 invitations issued.

Following registration, the final panel was selected using the Sortition Foundation’s established algorithm for selecting citizen assemblies.^[15] This seeks to maximise fairness while producing a group that closely reflects the agreed demographic profile. The resulting panel closely matched the agreed targets across the selected demographic and attitudinal characteristics. Some deviations from the overall targets are to be expected given the small overall sample size. These included: a slight under-representation of participants reporting a disability that limited their day-to-day activities a lot; a lower than targeted proportion of participants with no formal qualifications; a slightly higher proportion of participants with degree-level qualifications; and modest differences in representation across some geographic areas and political preference categories. However, these differences were considerably smaller than those observed among the pool respondents, indicating that the stratified selection process was successful in producing a broadly representative panel.

Through the lifetime of the Panel, some drop-out in participation is likely to be observed, while the participation varies for each Panel meeting due to individual panel member circumstances. These aspects will be analysed in the final methodological report for the project.

Ethics, data protection and participant experience

The People’s Panel is designed and delivered with a strong focus on inclusion, accessibility and participant wellbeing. At the outset of the project, the project team led an onboarding process that included individual welcome calls with every participant. In these calls, staff explained the purpose of the Panel, discussed participants’ expectations and questions, and explained the participant consent process and data protection arrangements. The calls were also used to identify and respond to accessibility requirements, including the provision of technical support, equipment or other practical adjustments where needed.

Throughout the project, care is taken to ensure that all materials provided to participants are written in clear, accessible language. Participants are provided with information about Panel topics in advance.

Participants are reminded throughout the process that participation is voluntary and that they may withdraw at any time. Personal and special category data are handled in accordance with data protection legislation. Appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure that participant data are stored securely, accessed only by authorised individuals, and reported in aggregate form so that individual participants cannot be identified.

In recognition of the time and expertise contributed by participants, and to support inclusion and participation, panel members receive a payment or voucher following attendance at each panel meeting.

The project places a strong emphasis on creating a safe, respectful and positive environment for participants. Through the onboarding process and early panel discussions, participants worked together to establish a shared set of expectations covering respectful dialogue, listening to different perspectives, maintaining confidentiality for themselves and others, and minimising the sharing of personal information during discussions. Facilitators are trained to ensure that these agreed ways of working are maintained during the discussions.

A safeguarding policy is in place, with staff and facilitators trained to identify and respond appropriately to any concerns. At each meeting, facilitators reiterate the agreed ways of working and remind participants of the support available if they experience distress, feel uncomfortable, or require additional assistance.

Ongoing technical support is provided during and between the meetings, supporting participants to become increasingly comfortable with the online Microsoft Teams environment.

The Scottish Government has also made commitments to participants, including our commitment to supporting member participation and inclusion throughout the lifetime of the Panel; and the commitment to analyse and share what participants are telling us.

After every Panel meeting, participants are asked to provide feedback, and findings from this are being used to adapt the project approach.

Analysis approach

Panel discussions are transcribed, and panel members’ views, reactions and responses are also captured by a note-taker and an observer. This provides comprehensive notes which are compiled and then thematically analysed. This includes systematically coding the data, grouping similar codes together and developing themes that capture important meanings or insights about the research topics.

The reports illustrate the findings by using selected quotes from the panel members. The quotes reflect various viewpoints and provide some insight into the discussions that took place at this event. Some views were shared across most panel members, and some were specific to a smaller group of people.

Descriptive terminology is used to add clarity on the views. For example, ‘some’ members or ‘many’. It is not the intention to quantify the members’ views, but it should be noted that in general, ‘many’ or ‘most’ members refers to views that were shared across a large section of the sample. Use of the term ‘some’ is used to reflect an idea or viewpoint but without specifying the number. While some issues were raised by a smaller sub-set of panel respondents, they are no less important just because fewer people experienced them.

4.2 Annex B: People’s Panel Event 2 Overview

The second meeting of the Scottish Government People’s Panel took place on 19 March 2026 and was attended by 37 of the 40 selected participants. Two participants were unable to attend due to family emergencies, and one participant could not attend and was not replaced prior to the meeting.

The People’s Panel sample is designed to reflect an overall target demographic profile in line with the population of Scotland, for key characteristics. When some participants are unable to attend specific meetings, this affects the balance of the demographic profile of the participants for that meeting.

Overall, the demographic profile of the attendees at the second People’s Panel event aligned closely with the target demographic coverage based on the 2022 Scottish Census findings. A few groups were slightly under‑represented, such as White Scottish respondents, people with no qualifications, those aged 25-34 and people with significant disabilities. Others were slightly over‑represented, including those aged 35-44, people with no disabilities, those with degree‑level qualifications or above, and people who are retired.

However, even with full participation of the 40 selected participants, some divergence from the targets would have remained – particularly for education, where the full People’s Panel sample is slightly over‑representative of people with higher‑level qualifications. In addition, given the small total sample size, it is unlikely to be possible to meet all targets exactly, and even minor shifts in participant numbers can have impacts on the overall balance.

4.3 Discussion topics and questions

Before the meeting, the People’s Panel research team worked closely with policy and analytical colleagues working on relevant topics across Government to agree the discussion aims and develop a set of themes and questions to guide the discussion. Facilitators and note-takers were provided with guidance and training in advance of the session.

Before the meeting, participants were provided with a short written briefing on the discussion topic: trust in government. In the meeting, the discussion topics were introduced with a short presentation and Q&A session.

The session involved:

• three small‑group discussion sessions, each around 45 minutes long;
• six small groups of 6-7 participants;
• an experienced facilitator and note-taker for each group; and
• observers from relevant research or policy teams in some groups.

Group membership was changed after the first discussion session to ensure that participants would have the chance to meet and share views with a wide range of other participants. All groups explored the same set of questions, with facilitators given flexibility to follow the discussion where relevant.

Following the three group discussions, all the participants came together in a final plenary session to share and discuss the findings from each of the groups.

Participant feedback

After each Scottish Government People’s Panel event, panel members are invited to complete an online survey to provide feedback on their experience. Twenty-four of the 37 panel members who attended the event completed the survey for the second People’s Panel meeting.

Overall experience of the second event was positive, with 96% of the members who filled in the post-event survey (n=24) saying they had a good experience.

Members were positive about their experience of support before the event including information provided in advance and communications about the project.

On the day, members were positive about the presentation and group discussions on Trust in Government, agreeing that the presentation was clear and easy to follow and the group discussions were interesting and relevant. Confidence was less strong around understanding how the Scottish Government will report the findings to Ministers and officials.

During the event the small groups changed between session one and session two. Most participants were comfortable with this, though a small minority expressed some discomfort, suggesting this approach worked well overall but not for everyone.

As with the feedback from Event 1, members’ views were mixed on whether the People’s Panel would influence decisions in the Scottish Government.