Guide to Consultation and Research at North Somerset Council

Guide to consultation and research at North Somerset Council

V1. January 2015 / Dave Ostry

Contents

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Why consult

3. Existing policies

4. Consultation

4.1. basic model

4.3. Timing

4.4 Organisations

4.5. Eligibility

5. Research

5.1. Quantitative

5.1.1.Sampling

5.1.2.Medium

5.2. Qualitative

7. Thematic

7. Tools

8. Things to avoid

1. Introduction

This aim of this guide is to help with projects which try and reliably find out what large groups of people think, want or do. It covers consultation, surveys, focus groups and similar research methods.

When we consult or research in our private lives it’s up to us how well we do it. When a public body like the council wants to consult a population or do some research among the population to understand something, we need to be able to show we are doing it in an honest, reliable, well-organised and transparent way. These guidelines are to help you do that.

What is consultation? In most uses (‘consult your doctor’) it means an individual asking someone something, mainly a discussion to get the advice of a specialist.

Research is a simpler word. It means gathering information in a systematic way, to understand something.

This paper covers both consultation and research projects because:

a) they share some common tools and rules.

b) theyshare the idea of generalising from a small set of responses onto a wider population. If we consult the public on our plans for holding horse races on the beach and nobody ‘objects’, we take it as meaning something bigger - perhaps that, among the wider population, there is no widespread objection. If we can’t make a more general inference from our small ‘sample’, why bother? This idea of sampling is at the heart of consultation and research.

Other things are not consultation or research, because we don’t do this extrapolation from a sample include:

• Meetings:
• Panels/forums
• Online forms

2. Why consult

Decisions made on the basis of information are likely to be better decisions. They can point to the best decision. Less ambitiously, but more commonly, they can identify unintended consequences of proposed actions.

Having a clear objective

Why consult? Consultations and research, in this context, are all about ‘finding things out by asking people stuff’. You do need to be clear on what you want to know. Without this, the whole project is likely to fail.

If we are asking people to give up their time to give us information, we owe it to them that, at the least, we have a clear aim behind what we are doing. The main aims must be expressed clearly, in a sentence or two in simple language. If you are working to the instructions of your boss, you must get them to state the aims in clear language.

Having a vague aim like ‘doing a consultation’ or ‘seeking views on this proposal’ is not a real aim at all. It is a general aspiration. It does not guide you about what you need to do, operationally.

Top tip: If you find yourself having to ‘do a consultation’ or research project, you can’t proceed on just that basis. As a first step and get the person who has told you to do it, to write out the specific aims of the consultation and the resources available. If they won’t then get in touch with us.

3. Existing policies

There are three main rules you need to adhere to when doing a consultation or research project in the name of North Somerset Council:

Rule 1: Get expert help. Contact someone in the Business Intelligence Service, well in advance of the consultation needing to go live. As a bare minimum we need 7 working days, more if it is a complex project.

Rule 2.Publicise the project on econsult. This is our public-facing web platform listing all council consultations. We have committed to the people North Somerset to post all council consultations on there (see more about econsult in Section XXX)

Rule 3.Publish results of the project on eConsult within 6 months of the end of data collection. As well as good practice, this is another promise to the public. There are exceptional cases (one or two a year) where the sensitivity of the information over-rides this, though even in these cases the project needs some words of closure. As a rider to rule 3, if we can say what we have done as a result of the consultation, that should be published within 12 months of the end of data collection.

There are also other rules you may need to adhere to, not specifically about consultation. As well as legal, data protection and equalities (covered elsewhere in these guidelines) the main onesare:

Writing style.Most consultations and research projects are as much about communication as about data collection. You need to write in the ‘house style’ and, if your consultation is online, this includes the rules for writing on the web.[Links]

Respect for the respondent and other ethical considerations. This is a frame of mind requiring us to prioritise their needs over ours. For example, in most cases, if we are asking respondents to give up their time to help us, we need to provide them with a real named contact in case of any questions.

Transparency: as someone working for a public body,the expectation is that you show your work. This relates to Freedomof Information law.

Fair access: People should be able to hear about and participate in consultations regardless of aspects of their identity (such as age, ethnicity or sensory impairment) . This relates to Equalities law.

4. Consultation

4.1. basic model

In the council context, consultation is usually amounts to asking people what they think about a draft plan, policy.

Many aspects of project management apply to both consultation projects and research projects (see below). However there are some issues that mainly apply to consultations.

• In most cases what is generally accepted by the term consultation is that we want feedback rather than a strict measurement of what % of residents think this or that.This translates into an emphasis is on free-text or comment, rather than percentages.
• We don’t base our aims on getting a ‘scientific’ sample of the population of interest. So the model can be ‘’you [public] come and get us” as opposed to a measurement survey, like an opinion poll, where we spend resources going to get an accurate cross-section of the public.
• We are asking people more about ‘us’ (e.g. our plan or policy) as opposed to asking people about ‘them’ (e.g. how they are going to vote). This is inherently limiting, as people are less likely to be motivated to ‘mark our work’ than to answer simple questions about their life. It can involve reading documents, often long and complex ones, which risks excluding parts of the population who lack the interest in doing so.
• In a survey you carry on until you have enough respondents to meet the ‘margin of error’ threshold and as soon as you have hit that, you stop (it’d waste money to continue). In a consultation (‘the come and get me’ model) the idea is ‘the more views the better’ so consultations are left open for as long as practical (see more on timings below).

4.2. The law

There are laws and government policies relating to consultation. These guidelines cannot give you a comprehensive legal grounding in consultation, especially as legal requirements change. If there are serious issues at stake, consult our legal department, well in advance of any consultation design decisions.

By way of general principles, a 2011 review of the law relating to council consultations about ‘restructuring’ services says…

“That consultation serves two distinct purposes:

• first, it provides the local authority with the information to enable it to determine the impact of its proposed decisions. So it provides the basis for the authority to take a reasoned and rational decision;
• secondly, beyond being merely a fact-finding exercise, it enables the consultees to influence the decision-making process.

The nature of consultation was defined in a legal case , as needing to have three essential features:

1. to be proper, consultation must be undertaken at a time when proposals are still at a formative stage;
2. it must include sufficient reasons for particular proposals to allow those consulted to give intelligent consideration and an intelligent response; and
3. the product [results of the consultation] must be conscientiously taken into account when the ultimate decision is taken.”

The second of these requirements was elaborated by [a judge]…that consultation could not be conducted in a vacuum, and that it was necessary for there to be some form of proposal to which consultees could respond, and that the relevant information must be presented in a form which is digestible for those to whom it is.” [1]

Other legal aspects of consultation and research, covered in later sections (data protection, information security and freedom of information).

4.3. Timing

How long should a consultation run for? There are some government guidelines which essentially say ‘for a reasonable length of time’.

You have to balance various things to decide what is reasonable. Generally the council convention is for at least four weeks, as a minimum. In many situations it will need to be longer, for example:

• if the project affects people’s vital interests (e.g. major change in service provision, change in statutory service)
• if the project runs over Christmas or August

There are other considerations for particular audiences, for example:

• teachers/schools – avoid school holidays.
• parishes: they may want to discuss the proposal at a monthly meeting. If your project launches the day after their monthly meeting, it may be 4 weeks until they can even hope to consider it. Soif parishes are part of the target-audience for your project, make sure it runs for at least 8 weeks (or longer if the time includes August or December).

Think about the issue and your audience and adjust timings accordingly.

Top tip:Be around when your survey or consultation launches. Don’t set it to launch when you are on leave etc in case there are any glitches or initial flurry of questions.

If online: say what TIME as well as date it ends. Don’t choose midnight as it is not clear which day that refers to. There’s little point closing it at 4pm on a Friday, unless you plan to start the analysis at the weekend: better to leave it open until say 9am on the Monday to give people that extra time to take part.

4.4 Organisations

Do you want the ‘views’ of organisations as well as (or instead of) the views of individuals? This is a tricky area – be careful and think this through properly.

What is the ‘view of an organisation’? An organisation can’t respond to a consultation, only an individual can. So are we asking…?

• the individual to ‘speak for the organisation’ based on their individual knowledge, with all the limitations implied in that? Or
• the individual respondent to canvas the members of theorganisation for us? This is a big ask so, if we want it, at the very least we must communicate that is what we want, including how they are supposed to relay to us the disparate views of the people they canvas – try and mould consensus within their organisation before they get back to us?

This can be especially tricky with loose or voluntary associations such as trade bodies or interest groups. Gatekeepers may well have interests different from some of (most of?) their members.Perhaps most wombat enthusiasts shun the official Wombat Protection Group because of its radical approach to an issue, so is the official group the way to get a rounded view of the opinions of wombat enthusiasts. This ‘take me to your leader’ model of consultation may seem a convenient shortcut but is full of problems.

There are two options:

A)we can ask what the official ‘policy position’ response of an organisation is to our proposals – in which case ask that. Many organisations want this kind of option for council consultations e.g. parishes want to give their official response to a draft policy. In such cases make clear what you are asking and make sure the response is linked to an organisation and the person speaking on its behalf and the organisation can only have a single response.

B)sometimes we don’t need an ‘official response on behalf of’ (or it can be impractical). An alternative may be that you want to ask the manager(s) of an organisation in their individual capacity as experts. They are individual respondents but their responses reflect years of professional experience.

A separate consideration before you start: do you want expert or organisational responses to carry more weight than individual responses. If a parish council rejects your proposal but 100 residents in the parish all endorse it – what is your interpretation of how popular it is? What if that number is 10 or 1,000?Some consultations have applied a numerical weight, making e.g. responses form parishes count 10 times more than responses from individuals. This is very rare and obviously tricky ground. But at least think through what you want and what you will do with the responsesof individuals versus organisations and communicate this to respondents.

Some types of consultation must legally seek views of particular organisations (e.g. the police or emergency services). These are usually specialist consultations like changes to road layouts, planning policy or school term-dates.

Top tip: If seeking the views of organisations you may want some questions to apply only to individual or organisational respondents. For example there is no point asking the individual respondent what organisation they represent: or asking the head of the ambulance service what his or her home postcode is.

4.5. Eligibility

Who can takepart in your project: only North Somerset residents? Commuters?Tourists?Only adults?

You’ll have to think about what sort of people are likely:

• to know about the issue and have something useful to contribute
• to be affected by the proposals, and

… make a judgment on that and communicate any eligibility restrictions in the consultation.

All our consultations are advertised online (see eConsult below). So the potential audience for your consultation is global. If you are seeking ideas on a new policy you may welcome views from residents of Bristol or Brazil. However, you may want to be able to look at responses according to where respondents live, so include a question to enable that to happen (e.g. postcode).

Enforcing eligibility is very difficult. The same logic applies to preventing someone replying multiple times. We can set up consultations so someone has to verify their identity before taking part by, for example, requiring registration, sending an email to registrant’s email address and only allowing them to access it through that email. But

a)this is onerous and is likely to put a lot of people off

b)anonymity of respondents can have value in itself (more open opinions, fewer data protection)

c)it is easy to get round by e.g. creating multiple email addresses.

So the net result is that it will probably put off people except those people we want to put off (the more motivated fraudsters). The only real point of asking people to verify their identity is in case we feel there may be a need to back-check eligibility in case of challenge to the results. This is a bit like petitions: people signing a petition have to ‘verify’ their identity by giving their name and address. No organisation could routinely check all identities as standard. Elections are perhaps the only case where eligibility/verification is applied strictly. It is instructive how much resource elections require, compared to consultations. And despite restrictions, election fraud is still an issue nationally.

In most cases it comes down to communicating what we want and trusting people to comply. If you do need to enforce some eligibility or verification restrictions contact the Business Intelligence Service as there may be some options.

5. Research

As outlined in Section 3, research is a very broad term. We are here only looking at it in the context of local government trying to get an accurate idea of what people want or think or do.

In this sense it is a cousin of consultation but it makes greater claims to being representative of a wider population, so is more concerned with sampling accurately. As such, it requires more project planning and management and is characterised by actively seeking to persuade people to take part (as opposed to the ‘come and get me’ model of consultations).

As a result it is usually more resource-intensive. So, the first question to ask is: can I get this information for free: does the information already exist? eConsult is a register of council consultation and research projects. But think creatively here: extrapolating a high quality national survey to North Somerset may offer a lot more accuracy than a poorly resourced local survey.

One way of thinking about research is to look separately at research attempting to answer the question ‘how many’ (quantitative research) versus research attempting to answer the question ‘why’ (qualitative research). North Somerset (and local government in general) has much less demand for the qualitative research: it accounts for less than 10% of our research effort. As a result, this section has much more on quantitative.

5.1. Quantitative

In this context, quantitative research means surveys.

5.1.1.Sampling

It’s all about the sample. Do your sample right or it’ll do you. The questionnaire is relatively far less important. Sampling is complicated and far beyond the scope of this toolkit. So, for surveys, seek advice from BISat an early stage, well before you have started to think about a questionnaire.

The first stage is, with reference to the aims of the survey, define what sort of people you are interested in. This could be as broad as all NS residents. In that case is there an age limit? It is good practice not to interview under 16s directly, without permission of the parent (or school).

You can think of defining your population of interest in geo-demographic terms (home location, age, sex etc). And or you can think of it in other ways e.g. lifestyle, interests, behaviour (commuters, cyclists etc).

In local government we are lucky in often having lists of people who we can sample accurately (e.g. service users). Consider:

• the ethical and legal issues: are you allowed to use your list of service users as a survey sample? Is that breaking data protection law?
• representativeness: are there people who are not on that list precisely because they have stopped using the service e.g. out of dissatisfaction? If so, a satisfaction measure based on the list may be misleading. Potential service users may be a population of interest.
• definitions: do you want to define anyone on the list as a ‘service user’? Or should you structure it in some way (people who have used the service in the last month)? Do you want took at ‘lapsed users’: on the list but not active in the past month.

Defining your population of interest and sample is so vital that you may need to go back and tweak your survey aims with reference to what sort of population and sample is affordable and practical.