I used to be an officer in the Royal Navy, and during the Strategic Studies part of our training we were taught that although the numbers from the Battle of Jutland don't look great for the RN (6,000+ dead and 3 battlecruisers lost, as opposed to only ~2,500 German dead and 1 battlecruiser lost, for example), the battle was a pretty much a conclusive strategic victory for the RN in the sense that the German High Seas Fleet spent the rest of the war in port. Other than the "U-Boat menace", the RN retained control of the seas.
Having being told this, I was surprised to see this morning in Sir David Cannadine's excellent book on George V that the author had described the battle as "disappointingly inconclusive".
So, what's the general consensus on the outcome of the battle? Bad day at the office for the RN, or conclusive sea power retaining victory? Or something else entirely? Was I being fed the RN party line?
The difference between the two views is essentially hindsight. At the time, nobody knew that the High Seas Fleet would never again attempt to seriously contest control of the North Sea, and so the battle can be seen as "disappointingly inconclusive". With hindsight, Jutland can be seen as a strategic victory that did enough damage to the morale of the High Seas Fleet (HSF) to prevent it from sortieing against the Grand Fleet for the rest of the war.
To expand further, we need to look at the overarching strategic goals of both sides. The Germans wanted to end the blockade of their coastline, which required the destruction of the Grand Fleet, or at least its removal as a fighting force that could challenge the HSF. The Royal Navy's goal was to prevent this happening. They could do this by either sinking the ships of the HSF, or by preserving their own ships. Jellicoe fought Jutland with the second of these goals forefront in his mind, and succeeded. The RN maintained its superiority in battleships, and despite the losses, still had a superiority in battlecruisers. However, they had missed an excellent chance to destroy the HSF, and as /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov points out, had to maintain the Grand Fleet to counteract the fleet-in-being threat of the HSF.
To the public, whose primary knowledge of the RN was an unbroken string of decisive victories stretching back to the Spanish Armada, the First World War was extremely disappointing. The loss of an RN squadron at Coronel, and the inconclusive clash at Dogger Bank, had dented public confidence in the RN. They were expecting a major, decisive victory at Jutland. Jellicoe's failure to deliver this, and the losses sustained by the RN really didn't help its public image. It seemed like the RN had not only lost the tactical battle, it had failed in its primary strategic goal of destroying the HSF. As it had succeeded in its secondary goal of preserving its strength, the battle was strategically inconclusive, and this entered the popular narrative of the battle. But Jellicoe's goal was never to destroy the HSF. He could afford an attritional series of battles like Jutland, and fully expected to have to. By incurring affordable losses to his own fleet, he had won the strategic victory he sought.
As to why the RN didn't do better at Jutland, there's no one reason why. There were failures at every level of the RN's command structure, and at every stage of the battle and the preparation for it. I can go into further detail if people want, but I don't quite think this is the thread for it.
The British Fleet was the best in the world, and anything less than overwhelming victory was going to be a disappointment on at least some level. Especially in the immediate aftermath, there was a good deal of public outcry. The fact that they didn't smash the German fleet allowed it to remain a fleet-in-being, mostly staying in port, but nevertheless tying up a large amount of British ships to make sure it stayed there. I exapnd a bit more on Jutland and the aftereffects in this old post which might be of use to you, but there is plenty more that can be said here, so hopefully one of the boat guys will show up (/u/thefourthmaninaboat ?).
The Price of Admiralty, by John Keegan is also good.
The other issue to remember is Jutland was going to be compared to Tishuma only 11 years earlier. That WAS a decisive battle. There were many reasons why Jutland could not be the same, but that's what it was going to be compared to.