Youth justice standards: consultation analysis

3. Method

The online consultation was launched by the Scottish Government on October 31, 2019, via the consultation hub Citizen Space. The consultation officially ran until January 23, 2020, although remained open until mid-February 2020 after a small number of extensions had been requested. The Centre for Youth & Criminal Justice (CYCJ) was requested by the Scottish Government to analyse and provide a comprehensive report of the consultation findings. Data was shared with CYCJ on March 19, 2020.

A further seven written responses were also submitted which did not answer the specific questions in the consultation (as well as one short covering letter which was not analysed). The data from these seven responses was applied as far as possible to each of the six questions, although there was no attempt to complete any of the quantitative questions asked as the level of interpretation required was too significant. All quantitative responses were downloaded and analysed using SPSS Version 25. All open-ended qualitative responses were downloaded and coded using NVivo 11. Qualitative responses were analysed thematically, question by question, and then cross-cutting themes were highlighted in a short summary section.

Two face-to-face meetings were also hosted by the Scottish Government in January 2020. These two meetings were attended by representatives from nine organisations. There was significant overlap between the two methods, with all bar one organisation also contributing to the online consultation (either directly or indirectly). As a result, a full formal analysis has not been undertaken of these face-to-face sessions, although key themes that emerged from these sessions that were not raised in the online consultation are reported in Section 5.

3.1. Participants

Although 31 responses were received, one was a short covering letter from a National Public Body (or similar organisation) that had already responded in full to the consultation. This letter was not included in the analysis. The consultation analysis is therefore drawn from the following 30 responses.