This guide, written by Dr Poornika Ananth, is intended as a resource for policymakers to help them understand how to use qualitative research methodologies in the written public consultation process.

Qualitative data are vivid, rich, and nuanced, and are particularly beneficial when complex processes and relationships between constructs need to be understood or examined, when individuals’ lived experiences, interpretations, and social contexts need to be captured, and when knowledge is incomplete, underdeveloped, or flawed.

The brief provides guidance on how to collect and analyse qualitative data from the public in ways that account for the standard constraints of public consultation processes and enable the development of an actionable set of policy insights.