Quality and Methodology Report
1. Consultation development
The focused consultation was designed to be as lay friendly as possible with information provided to enable people without detailed knowledge to engage with the questions. Where possible, jargon, technical terms, or complex language has been avoided. Visual aids, such as images and tables, were also used to support understanding.
Following the July Authority meeting, a draft survey was developed with input from internal staff and Authority members with expertise in social research and survey design, clinical and scientific knowledge, public involvement and data analysis. A webpage was also drafted to provide further background information to the consultation, which was the ‘landing page’ for the consultation.
Once a draft consultation was agreed, it was piloted with a range stakeholders, including members of our Professional Stakeholder Group (PSG) and Patient Engagement Forum (PEF) . Feedback was reviewed by the consultation working group and, following amendments, a second round of user testing was run. This was carried out to ensure that the consultation functioned as planned in the platform, was clinically accurate and was accessible to a range of audiences, particularly patients.
A third-party software, built by SurveyMonkey, was used to host this consultation. Information on accessibility of this software is available on the SurveyMonkey website. The HFEA also provided the option for respondents to request the survey in an alternative accessible format.
2. Format and fieldwork period
The consultation ran for six weeks from 18 August 2025 to 30 September 2025. It was publicised widely across HFEA social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn and shared via the Clinic Focus newsletter. It was also promoted on the HFEA website, shared directly with clinic Persons Responsible by email and via partner organisations and stakeholders. Respondents could respond via an online survey or email using the questionnaire in an accessible Word document. It was restricted to only those over the age of 18 and when using the online questionnaire, it was only possible to take the survey once from the same browser.
Monitoring of the survey responses took place on a bi-weekly basis with follow-ups with groups and re-posts on social media during the period that the consultation was open.
3. Data cleaning
We received 486 responses to this consultation. A total of 213 responses were excluded due to being incomplete, abandoned, or not meeting eligibility criteria. Of those 213, 83% (177) respondents did not provide an answer to the required question asking for their preference on a clinic’s main profile page statistic. The remaining 17% (36 responses) were not submitted by respondents despite clear direction given in the consultation text. It was therefore assumed these respondents no longer wished to participate.
In total, 273 complete submitted responses were included in the final analysis. Free text responses that did not directly relate to the topic consulted on, and were beyond the scope of this consultation, are summarised at the end of this report and will form part of further, more detailed work.
4. Analysis
All questions in the main body of the consultation were optional, apart from the questions on respondent categories and stating preferences on presenting a clinic’s main profile page statistic. Individual respondent groups refer to responses from the patients, professionals, organisations, and member of the public response groups.
Percentages provided in figures have been calculated from the total number of responses received for that specific question. Respondents who did not respond to a question were excluded from the summary analysis where relevant and corresponding N numbers are included in the figures and figure notes directly below.
Ranked options for presenting a clinic’s main profile page statistic were assigned weights from 5 to 2. In cases where a respondent would not choose any statistic, they were able to select “Would not choose” and this would be ranked as 1. From this, weighted averages for each way of presenting a clinic’s main profile page statistic were calculated for all those completing the consultation and by response group.
Those preferring a combined statistic were excluded from the analysis for questions asking about the inclusion or exclusion of different treatment types (fresh/frozen embryo transfers, donor eggs and PGT-A) in a clinic’s main profile page statistic, as explained in the consultation text (N=44).
88 free text responses were received to the consultation. These were analysed using a coding framework developed by labelling of overarching themes, updated to ensure flexibility and reliability. The framework allowed key themes and issues to be summarised across the responses. Further, more detailed analysis of themes falling outside the scope of this consultation is planned.
The selection of quotes provided by respondents throughout this report were chosen to represent key themes drawn from the coding framework. Suspected spelling errors in quotes have been corrected and denoted with square brackets within the text of the quote. Where relevant, explanations of abbreviations in quotes have also been added for clarity.
Prior to publication, several quality checks were undertaken to ensure data accuracy. This included manual validation of consultation responses, structural checks to underlying data, consensus coding and a thorough check of all figures listed in the consultation (not by the author of this summary report) and signed off by a third member of the team. The summary report was also reviewed by several members of staff internally to ensure accuracy of data and messages.
5. Generalisability
Responses received are only representative of those who took part in the consultation and should not be interpreted as being representative of UK public opinion. Demographic information, such as age or ethnicity, was not collected. This was agreed by the Authority to adhere to the principle of data minimisation, and it was decided early on that a full analysis by demographic background would not be possible during the timeframe.
6. Strengths
The consultation received engagement from a range of stakeholders i.e., professionals, organisations and prospective, current, or future patients. Due to the complex nature of the topics covered, the consultation text was user tested with several different stakeholder groups, including patients and professionals. In addition to this, visual aids were also developed and user tested to ensure that the consultation was as accessible as possible to a wide audience. Instead of asking respondents to choose one rate, this consultation allowed respondents to rank rates in order of preference and/or to choose none. This allowed us to gather as wide a perspective of views across different groups as possible. Respondents also had the opportunity to provide any additional comments they had on the topics addressed in the consultation to allow for the Authority to gain further context into the choices made.
7. Limitations and mitigations
When reviewing responses submitted on behalf of an organisation to the consultation, there were five organisations where more than one response was submitted on behalf of an organisation. Due to this, 12 individual responses submitted were determined to have incorrectly classified themselves under the “respondent type” question and should instead be regarded as “individuals sharing their professional view”. This is based on our assumption that an organisational response would be a single, unified response sharing the views of the organisation as whole. Where possible, those who provided an email address were contacted to verify whether their response was submitted correctly.
Due the minimal impact overall, poor engagement when clarifying responses and the need to share findings with the Authority to ensure that deadlines to update CaFC were met, responses were not reclassified. If there was no email address associated with the response, we were unable to validate these responses. In cases where there was only one response provided by an organisation or one response associated with contact details, these responses were not verified.
Additionally, across both the professional and organisational response groups there were a high number of responses from two individual organisations (17% and 20%, respectively). A large proportion of these respondents provided the same, or very similar, responses and may reflect standard practice at those clinics. As it is known that clinics differ in the treatments offered, caution is advised when extrapolating these findings to the rest of the sector. This was a known risk of the consultation and the HFEA used every opportunity to share the consultation text with stakeholders across the sector.
8. Timelines and punctuality
The fieldwork period of the consultation began in August 2025 and lasted six weeks. Analysis and report writing began on 01 October 2025 and was completed on 16 October 2025. A short analysis period was necessary to ensure that results of the consultation were available for Authority members to review in November 2025, prior to the scheduled CaFC update.
9. Organisations responding to the consultation
The organisations whose representative views were provided for this consultation and who consented for the attribution and publication of their comments are set out below. 23 responses provided on behalf of an organisation did not name the organisation they were responding on behalf of. Of those who named an organisation, 15 respondents preferred for their comments to be anonymised. In five cases there was more than one response from an individual organisation.
- Association of Reproductive and Clinical Scientists (ARCS)
- Avenues
- Beginnings assisted conception unit Epsom & St Helier
- Bourn Hall Clinic (Norwich)
- Bourn Hall Clinic (Cambridge)
- Bourn Hall (Wickford)
- British Fertility Society
- British Infertility Counselling Association
- Care Fertility
- “Create Health” / or “Create Fertility”
- CRGH
- Progress Educational Trust
- Sarah Banks Coaching/TTC Support UK
- The Fertility Alliance
Review date: 23 December 2027
