Linkage of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to Avon & Somerset Police regional police records

Alison Teyhan; Rosie Cornish; Andy Boyd; Richard Thomas; Mark Mumme; Amy Dillon; Iain Brennan; Adrian Brown; Anna Ferrante; John Macleod

doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.18720.1

Linkage of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to Avon & Somerset Police regional police records

Wellcome Open Res. 2023 Feb 1:8:47. doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.18720.1. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Alison Teyhan¹, Rosie Cornish^{1

2}, Andy Boyd³, Richard Thomas³, Mark Mumme¹, Amy Dillon⁴, Iain Brennan⁵, Adrian Brown⁶, Anna Ferrante⁶, John Macleod^{1

3

7

8}

Affiliations

¹ ALSPAC, Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 2BN, UK.
² MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 2BN, UK.
³ UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration, Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 2PS, UK.
⁴ NIHR Biomedical Research Centre Bristol, University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 2BN, UK.
⁵ School of Criminology, Sociology and Policing, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK.
⁶ Centre for Data Linkage, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
⁷ National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration West (NIHR ARC West), University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, Bristol, BS1 2NT, UK.
⁸ Centre for Academic Primary Care, Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 2PS, UK.

Abstract

This data note describes a new resource for crime-related research: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) linked to regional police records. The police data were provided by Avon & Somerset Police (A&SP), whose area of responsibility contains the ALSPAC recruitment area. In total, ALSPAC had permission to link to crime records for 12,662 of the 'study children' (now adults, who were born in the early 1990s). The linkage took place in two stages: Stage 1 involved the ALSPAC Data Linkage Team establishing the linkage using personal identifiers common to both the ALSPAC participant database and A&SP records using deterministic and probabilistic methods. Stage 2 involved A&SP extracting attribute data on the matched individuals, removing personal identifiers and securely sharing the de-identified records with ALSPAC. The police data extraction took place in July 2021, when the participants were in their late 20s/early 30s. This data note contains details on the resulting linked police records available. In brief, electronic police records were available from 2007 onwards. In total, 1757 participants (14%) linked to at least one police record for a charge, offence 'taken into consideration', caution, or another out of court disposal. Linked participants had a total of 6413 records relating to 6283 offences. Almost three quarters of the linked participants were male. The most common offence types were violence against the person (22% of records), drug offences (19%), theft (17%) and public order offences (11%). This data note also details important issues that researchers using the local police data should be aware of, including the importance of defining an appropriate denominator, completeness, and biases affecting police records.

Keywords: ALSPAC; birth cohort; crime; linkage; police data.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Wellcome [086118, https://doi.org/10.35802/086118]; the UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust [217065, https://doi.org/10.35802/217065] and the University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC; the Medical Research Council [MC_PC_17210; to AB, AT, RT and JM]; ESRC [ES/T014393/1; grant awarded to AT, RC, IB and JM]; and Avon and Somerset Police.