Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland: Monitoring Framework, 2025

What can’t the Monitoring Framework be used for?

As highlighted by the socio-ecological model (Figure 2 below) and public health approach (Figure 1 above), there are multiple and inter-connected factors that contribute to and influence violence prevention and the wider violence prevention ecosystem which the VPF actions are one part of. It is therefore necessary to be transparent about the challenges of attributing VPF actions to changes in the incidence and prevalence of violence at a population level.

As such the Monitoring Framework (MF) cannot be used to:

• explain why changes (positive or negative) are occurring
• assess the impact of specific policies or interventions – this would require a counterfactual or comparison group as the MF cannot account for other influencing factors
• assess the strength or size of a policy or intervention’s contribution to observed changes
• comprehensively audit all measures that could indicate change in violence prevention and reduction
• monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of specific violence prevention interventions