Exploring public views on assisted dying

34 Jury members were recruited using a stratified sampling method which creates a mini-public broadly representative of the national population of England. This is a civic lottery method called ‘sortition’. The process was delivered by The Sortition Foundation.

30 people committed to participating in the Jury process. Two Jury members were unwell on the final day of deliberations, so the voting on the final day was completed by 28 Jury members.

A summary of the recruitment detail can be found here.

The recruitment process had three stages:

Stage 1

The Sortition Foundation randomly selected 7,000 addresses from across England, who each received a letter in the post. This invited those aged 18 years or older, living at an address that received a letter to register their interest in participating in the Citizens’ Jury Exploring Public Views on Assisted Dying.

Stage 2

As part of the sign-up procedure, all potential participants were required to share a small number of demographic and attitudinal questions. This was needed to ensure that the Citizens’ Jury final make-up was broadly representative of the English population.

Stage 3

This information was then used as input into a ‘sortition algorithm’ which randomly selected 34 participants by computer, over-recruiting by four to ensure a final 30 members of the Jury. This is done in such a way as to create a representative sample of the English population (e.g. the age profile of participants in the Citizens’ Jury is broadly similar to the age profile of the population of England as a whole). Details of the specific algorithm used, including information about the fairness of the algorithm, can be found here.