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CHAPTER FOUR YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY: BROADER VIEWS OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCOTLAND

Chapter aims

This chapter addresses the following key questions:

• What are the key features of adult views of young people more generally?
• Is the behaviour of young people seen as significantly worse than in the past?
• To what extent do positive attitudes towards young people co-exist with more negative views?
• What are the key drivers or predictors of positive and negative views of young people?
• Do adults consider that young people are fairly portrayed by the media?

Introduction

This section explores adult views of young people more generally, through analysis of responses to a series of attitudinal statements. In particular, it looks at whether the current generation of young people are seen as different from their predecessors, and at the extent to which both positive and negative constructions of young people coexist in prevailing adult views.

The statements presented to respondents were as follows:

• The behaviour of young people today is no worse than it was in the past
• The views of young people aren't listened to enough
• Girls are more badly behaved than boys nowadays
• Most young people are responsible and well-behaved
• Young people today have no respect for older people
• Most young people are helpful and friendly
• Older people today have no respect for young people

Unpacking adult views of young people

The results for each statement are shown below.

Table 5 - Agreement with statements about young people

What is immediately obvious from this is that general perceptions of young people are characterised by significant contradictions and ambivalence. For example, while 60% of respondents disagree that the behaviour of young people is no worse than in past - i.e. think that it is worse than in the past - almost the same proportion agree that young people are not listened to enough. Similarly, almost half agree that young people have no respect for older people; but over half agree that young people are helpful and friendly, 57% that most young people are responsible and well-behaved, and 35% that olderpeople have no respect for younger people.

It is not immediately clear how to interpret responses to the statement about gender. While a sizeable minority of respondents (38%) agree with the premise that 'girls are more badly behaved than boys nowadays', there is also quite a lot of disagreement (28%). Most research evidence from elsewhere points to a continuing gender gap in overall offending (and, especially, serious offending) by young people - i.e. to greater evidence of offending by young males - though the gap narrows for particular year groups and the pattern reverses entirely for some specific forms of delinquency. ² It seems likely that, in a period of sustained concern about young people in general, the behaviour of girls - which is traditionally seen as less unruly and problematic - becomes a focus for more generalised concerns about social order.

Key drivers of positive and negative attitudes towards young people

In order to facilitate an analysis of the key drivers of positive and negative perceptions of young people in general, four of the items (two positive and two negative ³) were scaled to create a single index with a minimum score of 4 (indicating the most positive end of the spectrum) and a maximum score of 20 (indicating the least positive). By assigning cases to tertiles, it was possible to categorise individuals as belonging to the 'most positive', 'least positive' or 'intermediate' groups. The following table summarises the relationship between this variable and a range of key independent variables.

Table 6 - General orientation towards young people, by key variables

Note: Some categories not shown for reasons of space

Among the points to note are the following:

• Those in the youngest three age groups are more likely to be in the 'least positive' group. It cannot be assumed, then, that older people will automatically have the most critical views of young people.
• Those who know most or all of the young people in their area are much more likely to feature in the 'most positive' group, though living in a household with a young person is a less powerful predictor.
• Most strikingly, general attitudes are clearly linked to levels of deprivation, with a powerful association between greater deprivation and more negative views of young people. This is a theme returned to throughout the report.
• Again, the most rural areas are associated with more positive orientations towards young people.

While the above bivariate analysis highlights a number of factors associated with attitudes towards young people, it does not take account of the fact that many of these are likely to be inter-related. Multivariate analysis (logistic regression) determines the independent impact of different factors on a dependent variable, and so helps to identify the most powerful predictors of a particular outcome.

Of the variables included in the model, four were identified as being significantly and independently linked to attitudes towards young people. Of these, higher levels of deprivation emerged as the most powerful predictor of a negative perception of young people, followed closely by lower educational attainment, then belonging to the two youngest age groups, and lack of contact with 11 to 24 year olds in local area. (see Annex 1 of this Report for the results of this analysis and Annex 2 for a more detailed description of the method).

Perceptions of media portrayals of young people

Respondents were also asked whether they felt that the media - for example, TV, newspapers and radio - present a fair or unfair picture of young people in Scotland these days. While 42% of respondents feel that media portrayal of young people is fair - almost the same proportion (38%) feel that it paints an unfair picture.

Figure 4 - How fair are media protrayals of young people in Scotland?

It is worth noting that it is the youngest and the oldest respondents who are least likely to say the picture the media presents is unfair. Not surprisingly those respondents with higher levels of contact with either 11 to 15 or 16 to 24 year-olds are relatively more likely than those with lower levels of contact to feel that the media portrayal of young people in Scotland these days is unfair. What is perhaps more surprising is a lack of any apparent relationship with newspaper readership, with tabloid readers and broadsheet readers equally likely to think that the media painted an unfair picture of young people.

Key points from this chapter

• There is plenty of evidence of adult attitudes that are critical of young people - for example, there seems to be a clear sense that the behaviour of young people today is worse than in the past and that young people lack respect for older people.
• But this is balanced, to a large extent, by more sympathetic opinions - relating, for example, to the need for the views of young people to be listened to more, or to perceptions of young people as largely responsible, or helpful, or friendly.
• Multivariate analysis reveals that living in an area of high deprivation is the most powerful predictor of negative views of young people, closely followed by lower educational attainment.
• There was a lack of consensus about how fairly young people are portrayed by the media, but interestingly views on this were not linked to newspaper readership.

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