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Chapter 2: The Consultation Process

Timing of Consultation

The written consultation became "live" on 20 April 2006 with a formal closing date of 13 July 2006 although responses received up to 21 July 2006 have been included in the analysis. The scale of the consultation was wide in terms of distribution to stakeholders and relatively large in terms of the volume of responses received. Staff in the Transport Strategy and Legislation Division of the Scottish Executive's Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Leaning Department supported the exercise.

Nature of Consultation

The consultation document comprised 118 pages. It set out the background to the consultation, described current transport trends, outlined the existing vision, aim and objectives for transport, and described current and potential plans and policies. Finally, the document considered how best to implement and monitor the strategy.

The consultation document invited comments on these issues, posing 65 questions as a framework for respondents' replies. Many of these questions covered several related issues, resulting in a substantial body of topics on which to comment.

In addition to the main consultation document, a summary booklet was issued by the Scottish Executive which publicised the consultation and invited views on the main issues under consideration.

Over 600 copies of the consultation paper were distributed to a wide range of organisations and individuals with an interest in national transport policy. Almost 500 copies of the summary booklet were also distributed.

Nature of Responses

The structure of the consultation document provided a steer in promoting some consistency in form of response. Many respondents used the 65 question framework to structure their response either electronically or in hard copy. Other respondents selected certain topics to respond to with many focusing on just one or two of the issues posed for consultation. The Minister's letter to MSPs regarding views on bus services generated a volume of responses from members of the public on this single topic.

Where respondents elected to submit responses which did not follow the response structure suggested in the consultation document, submissions ranged from one paragraph responses, to relatively long arguments, documented over many pages. Annex 3 contains a summary of the volume of responses received for each question.

Who Were the Respondents?

The list of organisations and individuals that responded is documented at Annex 2. Respondents could be grouped into broad categories as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Respondents by Category

NB Percentages may not total 100% exactly due to rounding

Unlike many previous consultations, this exercise was not dominated by responses from one particular sector. Although members of the public constituted the largest category of respondent with 26% of submissions from this sector, their responses tended not to address all 65 questions.

Seventeen per cent of responses were submitted by representative groups. These covered diverse interests including tourist bodies, community groups, lobby organisations, unions, architecture and design groups, and development bodies. Likewise, many different public bodies were represented amongst respondents. All but one local authority responded to the consultation, with one authority submitting responses from 2 different parts of its organisation respectively. Other public bodies included organisations from the transport, health, education, culture and tourism sectors.

Just over one in 16 responses was submitted by environmental or sustainable transport bodies. Around one in every 20 submissions was generated from the business sector or from members of the Scottish Parliament respectively.

It should be noted that the analysis of responses which follows does not attempt any weighting of responses to reflect, say, numbers of respondents from different sectors, or type of respondent. Any quantification of views is for indicative purposes only and is based on the population of respondents as set out in Table 1.

Naming Respondents

The convention adopted for this consultation has been to preserve anonymity of individual respondents and organisations, by attributing their comments and quotes to the grouped respondent category to which they fit. In this way, individual requests for anonymity are met, but a further depth is added to the analysis by providing some contextual information about the respondent type. The terms used to describe the different category of respondent are as follows:

Gaps in Respondent Type

The consultation attracted responses from a wide spectrum of respondents representing a variety of perspectives. Remote, rural and urban locations were also represented amongst respondents. Key equality bodies were amongst the respondents, ensuring that significant equality issues were highlighted as appropriate.

Approach to Analysis

The main challenges for the analysis of responses to the consultation were the relatively large number of questions and sub-questions posed in the consultation document and the lack of a standard electronic response form, which resulted in a variety of response formats and lengths.

A comprehensive electronic framework for identifying and recording relevant comments from respondents was developed and a number of ground-rules established to ensure responses were prepared for analysis in a consistent and sensible fashion.

Analytical Framework

An electronic Excel database was used to store and assist analysis of the responses. This database enabled the storage of both free text and numerical data in a systematic manner whilst providing the flexibility for framework amendments as the work progressed.

The fields used to record the material were based on the questions set out in the consultation document. Once responses had been examined, a small number of additional fields were added to accommodate sub-themes in questions. The result was a comprehensive list of fields which formed the headings for the consultation database of responses.

Ground-Rules

Separate Responses from the Same Individual/Organisation

On occasions, one respondent may send in more than one response. This can occur, for example, when they have further thoughts on the issue and wish to make more comment. In other instances, the respondent may have simply forgotten to enclose some evidence in their first reply and they contact the Review team again with more information. On occasions, a respondent may send the same response in both electronic and hard forms.

Both the Scottish Executive consultation team and the research team were alert to the possibilities of such double entries. Any identical responses were picked up by hand searching or electronic screening and removed from the exercise.

Quantitative Material

Although much of the analysis was based on descriptive free text, some scope existed for quantitative analysis and this was exploited. Such data usually involved approximate counts of the numbers of respondents who commented on particular topics and, within these groups, the numbers of respondents holding particular views. However, because of the open nature of the consultation, which did not require people to provide a response on every issue, the approach of many consultees in providing more general comments rather than responding to each question posed, and the way that respondents could "opt in" to their chosen response topics, quantification of responses was not appropriate in all instances and should be treated as simply indicative and illustrative rather than absolute. In addition, it should be noted that any statistics quoted here cannot be extrapolated to a wider population outwith the consultation population.

Factual Accuracy

The views presented in this analysis have not been vetted in any way for factual accuracy. The opinions and comments submitted to the consultation may be based on fact or may, indeed, be based on what respondents perceive to be accurate from their perspective, but which others may interpret differently. It is important for the analysis to represent views from all perspectives. The report may, therefore, contain analysis of responses which may be factually inaccurate, but are objective in terms of their reflection of strongly held perceptions.

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