Research and co-creation for the Office for National Statistics
- Public Sector
- Audience Research
- Campaign Strategy
- Co-creation Workshops
- Creative Development & Testing
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) commissioned NOSY to explore new ways to increase survey participation among 18 to 34-year-olds.
The research will inform the ONS’s ‘Refreshing the Citizen Relationship’ approach and the development of future engagement and creative campaigns.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics. Publishing over 650 statistical releases each year, the ONS plays a critical role in informing government decision-making, supporting policy development and ensuring public accountability.
These statistics rely heavily on data collected from survey responses. However, survey participation has declined internationally in recent years. Response rates have fallen particularly low among those aged 18 to 34, which increases the risk of non-response bias and may affect how well survey findings represent the experiences of younger adults.
To help address this, the ONS commissioned NOSY as the lead creative agency from February 2026 to May 2026, working in partnership with Goal 17, to explore the barriers, communications, and a creative approach to increasing survey participation among 18 to 34-year-olds.
NOSY and Goal 17 worked together to develop a multi-stage research and co-creation strategy
Participant recruitment
The project began with a targeted recruitment drive to ensure a highly representative mix of voices. By reaching out across various channels, we brought together individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and regions across the UK.
Qualitative discovery and co-creation
We ran a series of participatory workshops to engage directly with the target demographic. These sessions explored how well 18 to 34-year-olds understood the ONS alongside their underlying motivations for sharing data. This included multiple online workshops and an in-person event in London, which we filmed to capture the real-time insights of the participants.
Concept development
Using the foundational insights from the workshops, our design colleagues translated user feedback into overarching campaign concepts. We explored a variety of messaging themes and visual directions to test how different approaches influenced perception and trust.
Focus group refinement
These initial concepts were then brought back to a subset of the target audience for a focus group review. Participants evaluated the visual styling, tone of voice and calls to action. This direct audience guidance made it possible to eliminate approaches that did not resonate and refine the strongest concepts.
Live A/B test
To test the effectiveness of the co-created designs, a live A/B digital testing campaign was launched across ONS’s Facebook and Instagram pages. Running the refined creative assets in a real-world social media environment provided a way to measure actual user engagement and validate the qualitative findings with quantitative data.
Advert mock-up and one of the characters used in the A/B test campaignAt the conclusion of the project, we delivered an in-depth report to the ONS detailing practical recommendations for improving communication, building trust and encouraging participation in future surveys. Alongside this report, we provided the co-created campaign concepts and the data gathered from the A/B testing.
The insights gathered from this research will help inform the 'Refreshing the Citizen Relationship' approach at the Office for National Statistics and may support the development of engagement and creative campaigns to improve survey response rates among 18 to 34-year-olds, a group that has historically had lower participation rates.
One of the adverts used in the A/B test campaignPlease note: This work was delivered by NOSY Creative Agency as the main contractor in partnership with Goal 17 on behalf of the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The views and insights presented in this case study are entirely those of NOSY Creative Agency and do not constitute an official endorsement from the ONS.
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