I can confirm that copying and pasting doesn’t move the needle, at least in consultations I’ve been involved with—they will put weight on people actually engaging with the ideas (Similarly feel free to skip or provide very short answers to questions you don’t care much about and focus on the ones who care most about)
That’s interesting! I was thinking there was a chance it did, because in a write-up about a similar public consultation on live animal transport, Defra used a lot of “X% of people thought Y” framings in their analysis (more details). It depends whether they count duplicated responses when they do this.
As a follow-up, in consultations you’ve been involved with, did they put weight on the thoughts on random members of the public, assuming the thoughts were sensible ofc?
Yeah, that’s what I hoped. I couldn’t honestly say that I would care about these labels (cos I don’t eat animal products anyway), but I said stuff like ‘consumers would like to know this’, which I think is true.
I can confirm that copying and pasting doesn’t move the needle, at least in consultations I’ve been involved with—they will put weight on people actually engaging with the ideas (Similarly feel free to skip or provide very short answers to questions you don’t care much about and focus on the ones who care most about)
For context, Kirsten has long worked for UK government departments.
That’s interesting! I was thinking there was a chance it did, because in a write-up about a similar public consultation on live animal transport, Defra used a lot of “X% of people thought Y” framings in their analysis (more details). It depends whether they count duplicated responses when they do this.
Yes that’s true, if they use statistics like this, similar or duplocated responses might count
That’s interesting!
As a follow-up, in consultations you’ve been involved with, did they put weight on the thoughts on random members of the public, assuming the thoughts were sensible ofc?
There weren’t many, so I don’t know unfortunately. In this consultation you’d have a better chance because it’s about a public-facing issue
Yeah, that’s what I hoped. I couldn’t honestly say that I would care about these labels (cos I don’t eat animal products anyway), but I said stuff like ‘consumers would like to know this’, which I think is true.