A formative evaluation research into the use of psychology service by adolescents and young people : a preliminary investigation ito attendance/non-attendance.

Some general characteristics of adolescent psychological developments are firstly introduced. These are discussed with reference to the struggles that surround the onset of adolescence as well as those that pertain to leaving it. Normal adolescent difficulties and psychopathological problems are explored. These are further addressed in relation to problems pertaining to attendance/non-attendance to clinical sendees. Two research questions are posed pertaining to the examination of case records. The first examines the possibility of differentiating cases in relation to the categories used to classify present referral data in order to highlight attendance/non-attendance. The second explores the experiences of referred cases with regard their psychological difficulties that are observed in relation to attendance/non-attendance. The research evaluation combines: i. Categorical data from case records. Relationships of data are assessed on the Multidimensional Scalogram Analyses (MSA), ii. Qualitative analyses of responses to structured and open-ended questionnaire. The MSA show cases to be grouped according to the following variables: attendance/nonattendance, length of waiting times and ratings of psychological difficulty. Such groupings are not possible in relation to the following categories: age, referrer and locality of cases. However both the length of waiting times and ratings of severity are not directly linked to attendance/nonattendance.