The potential for linking cohort participants to official criminal records: a pilot study using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).

Andy Boyd,John Macleod,Rosie P Cornish,Alison Teyhan,Jazz Croft,Iain Brennan,Richard Thomas

doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16328.1

Abstract

Introduction: Linking longitudinal cohort resources with police-recorded records of criminal activity has the potential to inform public health style approaches and may reduce potential sources of bias from self-reported criminal data collected by cohort studies. A pilot linkage to police records in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) allows us to consider the acceptability of this linkage, its utility as a data resource, differences in self-reported crime according to consent status for data linkage, and the appropriate governance mechanism to support such a linkage. Methods: We carried out a pilot study that linked data from the ALSPAC birth cohort to Ministry of Justice (MoJ) records on criminal cautions and convictions. This pilot was conducted on a fully anonymous basis, meaning we cannot link the identified records to any participant or the wider information within the dataset. Using ALSPAC data, we used summary statistics to investigate differences in self-reported criminal activity according to socio-economic background and consent status. We used MoJ records to identify the geographic and temporal concentration of criminality in the ALSPAC cohort. Results: We found that the linkage appears acceptable to participants (4% of the sample opted out), levels of criminality are high enough to support research and that the majority of crimes occurred in Avon & Somerset (the policing area local to ALSPAC). Both those who opted out of linkage or did not respond to consent requests had higher levels of self-reported criminal behaviour compared to participants who provided explicit consent. Conclusions: These findings suggest that data linkage in ALSPAC provides opportunities to study criminal behaviour and that linked individual-level records can provide robust research in the area. Our findings also suggest the potential for bias when only using samples that have explicitly consented to data linkage, highlighting the limitations of opt-in consent strategies.

Highlights

Linking longitudinal cohort resources with policerecorded records of criminal activity has the potential to inform public health style approaches and may reduce potential sources of bias from self-reported criminal data collected by cohort studies
Data linkage between the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) cohort and criminal data recorded by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) can be used to reduce potential selection bias and measurement error that are key limitations when using self-reported crime data within longitudinal studies
We found significant demographic differences and rates of criminality according to consent status of participants, which suggest that methods of securing data must be considered carefully in future studies to reduce the risk of bias and excluding marginalised and vulnerable young people from the benefits of public research

Summary

Introduction

Linking longitudinal cohort resources with policerecorded records of criminal activity has the potential to inform public health style approaches and may reduce potential sources of bias from self-reported criminal data collected by cohort studies. Policing in the UK increasingly seeks to take a public health approach to tackling crime, where the focus is on proactive prevention, the tackling of upstream risk factors, and on populations rather than individuals[1] and emphasising that joint agency approaches are needed[2] This approach is multi-disciplinary, and relies on ‘the skilled use and interpretation of data and the evidence base to ensure that interventions are designed, delivered and tailored to be as effective as possible’[1]. One way of obtaining such measures is to use self-report measures of criminal data from participants or related individuals (e.g. teachers or parents) This is relatively straightforward and has the advantage of capturing crimes irrespective of whether they appear on any official records. By relying on self-report measures of criminality, it is likely that cohort studies underestimate rates of criminality compared to the wider population[4]

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