The making of EVENS

This chapter outlines how the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) was made; how the pioneering non-probability approach was implemented by the EVENS team and Ipsos. It documents the EVENS methods of making the invitation to participate open to all; questionnaire design and recruitment, including the importance of partnering with key race equality voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations; responsive adaptation to fieldwork methods (particularly procedures for data collection, data monitoring and quality assurance); and implementation of comprehensive post-fieldwork data adjustments to ensure a complete, robust dataset. Details of the EVENS sample are provided, demonstrating how data generated with the innovative EVENS methods can be used as representative of ethnic minority people in Britain. As a successful example of a non-traditional, non-probability approach to social surveys, EVENS presents a challenge to data producers and data users to better represent ethnic minority populations.