No. Panel members have been selected at random from the electoral register or recruited to be broadly representative of the Scottish population by gender, age, employment status, housing tenure, ethnic origin and geographic location.

Panel members are sent a questionnaire to complete roughly three times a year. The questionnaire can be electronic or on paper, or completed over the phone.

To date, Panel members have given feedback on a wide range of issues including:

• health literacy
• use of pharmacies
• oral health
• digital healthcare
• loneliness in Scotland
• Realistic Medicine
• HIV awareness
• inclusive communications
• organ and tissue donation after death
• the appropriate use of antibiotics
• health and wellbeing experiences during the pandemic

Panel members will get feedback about any surveys or other engagement activities that they take part in, and also about what impact or influence their participation has had. After each survey we produce a report about what we found out.

The Panel is constructed to provide robust findings at a national level only. Any findings at local level would not be statistically robust so we do not separate the data in this way.