Recruitment Services for Deliberative Engagement

The SPCB require a Contractor to provide recruitment services to randomly select and recruit members of the public to participate in deliberative engagement events delivered to support the work of the Scottish Parliament. Recruitment shall be undertaken using a robust and transparent random selection methodology, designed to minimise selection bias and maximise inclusivity.

The preferred approach is random selection via postal invitation to a randomly generated sample of residential addresses, with appropriate follow-up procedures to support response rates and accessibility. Where alternative or supplementary methods are proposed, Contractors must clearly demonstrate how these preserve the integrity of random selection.

Potential participants will then be stratified from the pool of respondents to broadly reflect the specified demographic profile requested by the Scottish Parliament, such as the adult population of Scotland, a Parliamentary region, or within a specified radius of an event location. To ensure broad participation the contractor should consider how their methodology encourages participation from residents in lower SIMD and have contingency plans to support successful fulfilment of all demographic targets.

The SPCB will typically require between 20–30 participants to be involved in deliberative engagement processes; however, this may vary depending on the needs of the Parliamentary Committee requesting deliberative input and available budget. The Contractor shall propose a methodology that is both cost-effective and consistent with the principles of random selection and stratified sampling, setting out how participants will be contacted, recruited, and selected from the respondent pool.