Is headspace making a difference to young people’s lives?

Appendix C
and ensure fieldwork efficiency.
Primary factors (the aims is to achieve diversity in):
• Client characteristics: sites that have a higher proportion of young people from Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander, CALD and Anglo-Celtic backgrounds.
• Site location: 2 urban, 1 regional and 1 outer-regional area in 2-3 States across Australia.
• Site establishment time: sites that have been operational since the first evaluation and sites
that have been newly established. Ideally, we would like to include one or two sites that
participated in the first evaluation.
• Site models: if possible, we will include sites with different service models.
Secondary factors for site selection:
• Willingness of staff at the proposed sites to participate in/assist the evaluation.
• Capacity of staff at the proposed sites to participate in/assist the evaluation.
• Other events occurring in the sites during the period of fieldwork (e.g. community events,
other research within the sites etc).
The five fieldwork sites cover 4 states/territories.
Recruitment for the interviews with young people was managed with the assistance of headspace
staff who made first contact with potential participants and asked young people if they would like
to participate in an interview for an evaluation. This method complies with our ethical obligation for
recruitment to be arm’s length. Young people who participated in interviews were given a $40 Coles/
Myer gift voucher in recognition of their time and contribution.
Clinical and non-clinical staff were recruited with the assistance of centre managers who provided
contact details for staff members within their centres. Fieldworkers then contacted staff and invited
them to participate in an interview. Each centre manager across the five sites was also interviewed.
All but one of the interviews were conducted face-to-face (one interview with a headspace manager
was conducted over the telephone). The duration of the interviews ranged from 20 to 60 minutes,
with interviews with young people generally shorter than those conducted with staff. Interviews
were semi-structured as interview schedules were created to guide the conversation around key
themes related to the evaluation questions. Three separate interview schedules were devised: for
young people receiving headspace services; for headspace centre managers; and for practitioners
delivering headspace services.
Brief demographic information was collected on all young people interviewed. A summary of this
data is presented in Figure 1 below. The analysis across a limited range of variables shows that
the young people interviewed were broadly representative of the young people in the headspace
administrative data (MDS1) in demographic characteristics but were not representative in terms of
service engagement.
All young people interviewed were still engaged with headspace services; no young people who had
dropped out of headspace services were identified and interviewed. The sample therefore does not
reflect the views of young people who have not been satisfied enough with the program to return to
the centre more than once. As a result, the data presented throughout this report is unable to explain
the rate of single service users of the headspace program.
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
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