It’s important to us that the panel of judges represents as many different parts of the LGBTQ+ community as possible. 

We work hard on ensuring that the judging panel:

- has at least 50% female, transgender or non-binary people
- includes young LGBTQ+ people who have previously been recognised by the QSAs
- represents the global majority 

There’s always going to be room for improvement here and we are open to suggestions - get in touch to share your ideas on how we can improve in the future.

We believe that enthusiasm alone isn’t good enough to prepare you as a judge for any awards event. That’s why we host a compulsory virtual briefing event each year which includes training on unconscious bias and our process for judging.

UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

Unconscious bias describes the associations we hold, outside our conscious awareness and control, and it affects everyone. It is triggered by our brain automatically making quick judgments and assessments and is influenced by our background, personal experiences, societal stereotypes and cultural context. It can therefore have a significant influence on our attitudes and behaviours, key decisions and can contribute to inequality. 

THE JUDGING PROCESS

Our judging process is based upon the ORCE principle (Observe, Record, Classify and Evaluate) which offers a common framework for evaluating candidate performance during employee selection procedures. We’ve adapted its use for the judging process of QSA because it is equitable and inclusive:

- Everybody gets the same opportunity to impress
- Evidence is assessed against the same 3 questions (with the exception of the student vote)
- Preventing an overlong, stressful and inefficient judging process

Before entries are passed to the judges they are screened to ensure that (where feasible):

- Their content broadly aligns with the category they have been submitted into
- The work shared has occurred within the nomination timeframe
- Content of entries is original and has not been plagiarised, not copied across multiple categories and within the word limit
- The maximum number of 5 online links and/or documents has not been exceeded
- Where needed proof of enrolment for study has been requested and received
- No homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate speech and all other forms of discrimination is present - the QSAs have a zero tolerance policy for this.

Once judges receive their allocated entries:

- They are asked to declare any conflicts of interest - this further removes any bias which may be introduced into the process
- Each of them individually reviews entries against the judging criteria for the relevant categories and chooses their winners and any suggestions for runner-up
- Judges are asked to provide rationales for their choices before submitting these to the Head Judge
- The judges are asked not to confer amongst themselves until everyone has submitted their choices
- The Head Judge then leads the judges in a group discussion to choose a winner for every category
- Once the judges have decided on their winners for each category we announce our SHORTLIST before the LIVE FINAL where we will come together to celebrate the work that everyone has done in the last 12 months.

The Queer of the Year is decided by the previous winners and finalists who are part of the overall judging panel. It’s important for us that they are given the power to decide who this person is. They are given the notes from all judges and they use these, along with guidance from our head judge, to choose their winner of this category.