About this Report

Methodology

Survey

This report is based on fieldwork undertaken by Survation between 11th and 14th August 2024. The survey was conducted via online interview. Invitations to complete surveys were sent out to UK residents aged 18+.

UK residents aged 18+ were sampled, with a sample of size of 2,074. For more detail on the survey method see Appendix A.

Survation provided topline analysis of the data, which Careful Industries further analysed to ascertain demographic trends.

Desk research

Policy and technology landscape scanning took place in parallel to the survey.

The scanning involved:

• research on UK government digital identity policy using publicly available information on gov.uk and in press articles

• reviewing policy papers and positions on digital identity by a range of non-government organisations including think tanks, consultancies, and civil society organisations representing communities impacted by digital identity

• discussions with a small number of digital identity experts to check and validate our findings

Terminology

This report includes a variety of terms and descriptors related to demographic grouping, in line with the high-level version of the Office of National Statistics standard. The intention throughout is to be inclusive and descriptive, and to shine a light on and challenge structural inequality.

Terminology related to identity, inequality, and power is always imperfect; it changes over time and can have different meanings and implications in different contexts. Due to the fast turnaround of this research, some of the demographic categories used in the survey are very broad and, at the topline, conflate ethnicity, nationality, race, and identity. These findings should not be taken to imply any innate preferences or characteristics for any demographic group. In recognition of this, the umbrella term “Ethnicity, nationality, and identity” is used throughout to refer to the five broad groups in which polling data has been segmented.

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford notes that there “is no definition of ‘migrant’ or of ‘immigrant’ in law. From a legal perspective, there is a key distinction between people who are ‘subject to immigration control’, who need permission to enter or to remain in the UK and those who are not.” [1] While the authors of this report acknowledge that multiple politicised and racialised meanings have been attached to the word “migrant”, it is used in this report to specifically describe people who are not British or Irish citizens and who do not hold British or Irish passports.