Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland: Monitoring Framework, 2025

What types of violence are in scope?

Violence is a cross-cutting issue that can take many forms. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines violence as:

The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation (World Health Organisation, 2002).

WHO has created a typology of violence which offers a useful way to understand the different contexts in which violence occurs and the interactions between types of violence:

Self-directed violence refers to violence in which the perpetrator and the victim are the same individual and is subdivided into self-abuse and suicide.

Interpersonal violence[4] refers to violence between individuals and is subdivided into family and intimate partner violence (which includes child maltreatment; intimate partner violence; and elder abuse) and community violence (which includes youth violence; assault by strangers; violence related to property crimes; and violence in workplaces and other institutions.)

Collective violence refers to violence committed by larger groups of individuals and can be subdivided into social, political and economic violence.

Equally Safe – Scotland’s strategy for preventing violence against women and girls (VAWG) – adopts a definition of gender-based violence as developed by the former National Group to Address Violence against Women (and based on the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women). It states that the phrase ‘violence against women and girls’ is used to:

describe violent and abusive behaviour directed at women and girls because they are women and girls. It is behaviour which is carried out predominantly by men. It is an abuse of power and stems from systemic, deep-rooted women’s inequality. VAWG limits women’s and girls’ freedom and potential and is a fundamental violation of human rights (Scottish Government, 2023c)

Gendered analyses of violence demonstrate that women are the primary victims of violence in the home and within intimate relationships and are most likely to be sexually victimised [5]. In terms of violence within the community and in public spaces (excluding workplace violence), men are most likely to be victims, and the perpetrators are most likely to be male.

Violent crime is experienced disproportionately by those who have already been a victim of violence. Research on repeat violence in Scotland indicates the need to understand repeat violence as a dynamic process, rather than a series of discrete events, whereby different forms and contexts of violence interact and reinforce one another. It suggests non-sexual community violence cannot be prevented without also understanding and addressing violence against women and girls (VAWG), including sexual violence and domestic abuse, and without also approaching men’s violence towards other men as a gendered phenomenon, and acknowledging that gender inequality also harms men and boys[6]. The research also illustrates the dynamic and contested character of the categories of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’, which overlap and shift across the life course.

The VPF acknowledges all forms of violence, the gendered nature of interpersonal violence, and the interplay between different forms of violence, and between the categories of perpetrator and victim.

Decisions about what is in and out of scope for monitoring have been informed by the following key principles. The Monitoring Framework seeks to

• optimise use of and ensure best value from existing data and evidence
• monitor indicator themes which align closest with the types of violence the VPF funded actions target – focused on (but not limited to) non-sexual interpersonal violence in the community – to ensure it is most useful in steering tangible actions (existing or new) delivered through the framework
• acknowledge and situate the VPF action plan within the wider violence prevention eco-system, acknowledging the role of other government policies and providing a line of sight to, but not unnecessarily duplicating other monitoring activity, including a pending Measurement Framework for Equally Safe

Taking a lead from the Scottish Government’s Vision for Justice in Scotland: Measurement Framework, this framework includes high level indicators to introduce and monitor key trends in the incidence and prevalence of different forms of interpersonal violence (see indicator 1: reduction in all forms of interpersonal violence). Thereafter, more granular indicators within this framework focus on (but are not limited to) themes which align closest with the types of violence targeted through the VPF Action Plan, to help us monitor high level changes in the prevalence and nature of non-sexual interpersonal violence and changes in fear and perceptions of violence within communities.

This is intended to provide read across to other government strategies, including Equally Safe: Scotland’s Strategy for Preventing and Eradicating Violence Against Women and Girls without unnecessarily duplicating other monitoring activity. The VPF MF therefore first introduces – at a high level (indicator one) – all forms of interpersonal violence, including sexual violence and domestic abuse, to acknowledge the connections between different forms of violence, before then focusing in more granular detail on non-sexual interpersonal violence in the community.  A measurement framework for Equally Safe is currently under development.

Further information on other forms of violence, such as sexual violence, is available in a number of publications available on the Scottish Government website and can be found here: Publications - gov.scot.