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Publication - Statistics

Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland: Monitoring Framework, 2025

Published
16 December 2025
From
Minister for Victims and Community Safety, +1 more … Director of Safer Communities
Directorate
Safer Communities Directorate
Topic
Law and order

Monitoring framework to support the delivery of the Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland.

Part of

Supporting documents

What is the purpose of the Monitoring Framework and how can it be used?

The VPF Measurement Framework is intended to monitor, over the longer term, progress towards the VPF vision: To prevent violence, and when it does occur, to reduce its harms.

In recognition of the 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, the Measurement Framework has been re-named a Monitoring Framework (MF).

The MF collates data and evidence across a range of key, robust sources to provide an overview of the extent and nature of violence in Scotland – focused on but not limited to non-sexual interpersonal violence – and how it has changed over the longer term.

By collecting evidence of change over time, the MF can be used to help assess where a renewed focus, a change in approach, or new activity, including new research or analysis, might be beneficial. In doing so, it contributes to step one: ‘Surveillance’ of the public health approach to violence prevention (see Figure 1 below) which seeks to define the violence problem through systematic data collection, and will increase our understanding of the extent and nature of violence in Scotland and how it has changed over time.

Figure 1: Steps of the public health approach (World Health Organisation, 2022).

Infographic showing the four steps of the public health approach, published by the World Health Organisation in 2022. The four steps are Surveillance (what is the problem?), Identify risk and protective factors (what are the causes?), Develop and evaluate interventions (what works and for whom?) and Implementation (how to expand the beneficial effects?).

The MF uses measures that are robust, collected regularly and are available at population (Scotland) level. The accompanying narrative for each measure includes further information relating to key demographic and protected characteristics where these are available and important to understanding differences in perceptions and experiences of violence for different groups in society – including to help identify groups at greatest risk of experiencing violence.

The MF is intended to complement, but does not negate the value of and need for local, place-based, and intervention specific research, surveillance and evaluation activity, which is particularly beneficial in terms of gathering learning to inform scaling up and future delivery.

Contact

Email: Justice_Analysts@gov.scot

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