Setting targets

Deciding which demographic targets you use is important for legitimacy and for good decision-making - which is why we select participants by democratic lottery. Obviously, some targets are more important than others - and some might make sense for one process, but not others.

We always use: gender, age and geography. We often use highest level of education, disability, and ethnicity/ ancestry. We like to include an attitudinal question and a political orientation question.

When thinking about what questions to ask, these are things to bear in mind:

• what targets are hard to hit? These are good ones to include. For example, we often don’t hit the target for people with secondary school education - so we often include highest level of education to get that diversity in the room.

• are some people more affected by this question? You might want to ensure they’re in the room, possibly in larger numbers than they are in the community. For example, if there’s a development that affects one neighbourhood more than others.

• is it important that some people are in the room? If the topic is hate speech, you might want people who are targetted by hate speech in the room, so you might ask for religious affiliation or sexuality, for example.