Measuring serious violence perpetration: comparison of police-recorded and self-reported data in a UK cohort
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Introduction: Determining risk factors and consequences of serious violence requires accurate measures of violence. Self-reported and police-recorded offending are subject to different sources of bias. Objectives: To compare risk of self-reported and police-recorded serious violence perpetration in late adolescence and early adulthood using linked UK birth cohort and police data, to examine the association between cohort participation and police-recorded violence, and to use police-records to impute missing self-reported data on violence. Methods: We included individuals in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) who had been informed about the study's use of their linked data and had not opted out of linkage to police records (n = 12,662). We used descriptive statistics and logistic regression to address our objectives. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute self-reported violence data to examine the likely impact of missing data on estimates of prevalence. Results: Self-reported violence perpetration in the past year ranged from 5.3% (at 25 years) to 12.9% (at 20 years) among males and 3.2% (at 17, 22, 24 and 25 years) to 6.4% (at 18 years) among females. Police-recorded serious violence was lower at all ages, peaking at 17-18 years (1.7% among males, 0.5% among females). Study participation was lower among people who had or went on to have a police record for serious violence; as a result, the prevalence of self-reported violence in the imputed data was higher (compared to observed data) at all ages. Conclusions: Overall, our study demonstrates the difficulties in measuring violence. While we have shown that a key advantage of linkage to police records is it enables outcomes to be measured irrespective of study participation, police data undercounts serious violence. Further, observational studies may also underestimate violence perpetration as individuals with police-recorded serious violence are less likely to participate in research. Therefore, while record linkage allows the advantages of both official police records and self-reported measures to be exploited, it does not negate their limitations.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,747
Awards: G1684393010, G1793884970, The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): A multi- generation, longitudinal resource focusing on life course health and well- being., G3987754321, Influences on psychosocial and physical health in early adulthood: phenotypic enrichment of the ALSPAC cohort through linkage to primary care electronic patient records and other databases., G4503888525, Statistical Methods for Improving Causal Analyses, G6050707053, G6689231961, The impact of childhood adversity on violent crime in adolescence and early adulthood, The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): A multi-generation, longitudinal resource focusing on life course health and well-being., G801210579, G8502142660, G962835110
OpenAlex ID: W4407137137