The history of the word sortition comes from ancient Athienian democracy and is the selection of candidates by lot. When selecting participants for some participatory and deliberative processes, we select people using sortition. This can also be called a civic lottery.
By this, we mean the random stratified selection of a certain population based on demographics (like age, gender, education level and/or ethnicity), geography and/or attitudes to a certain topic. Sortition is internationally recognised as the gold standard recruitment methodology for deliberative processes.
As a result, members selected are typically recruited to be broadly reflective of the demographics of the geography or subject area in question. While this can mean town/city, local authority or nation, it can also mean members of a certain social or professional field.
How does this work in practice?
Random selection is used to identify potential assembly members initially, followed by selecting participants at random from that pool to match the sampling criteria. In practice what this means is that 5,000 to 10,000 letters (depending on the size of the process) are sent to random postcodes in the sampling area. Recipients are asked to register to join the assembly by providing some basic demographic, geographic and/or attitudinal information. This creates the pool from which the final sample is randomly selected from.
This process can be done by a market recruitment agency. In the UK, the Sortition Foundation specialises in this work.
Is this the only way to do recruitment?
This isn’t the only way to recruit participants for participatory and deliberative processes - you can also do your own ‘DIY sortition’ by doing door-to-door or telephone recruitment. You may have processes or elements of a process where you want a self-selecting sample or to work with specific groups of people (often differently affected by your topic, or people from minoritised groups).
To learn more about the different ways to recruit those who take part in deliberative processes have a look here.