Using Complementary Linked Data Sets to Triangulate the Relationship between Persistent School Absence and Violent Offending

• In Event: Advancing criminological research through administrative data: Lessons from the ADR UK Data First programme (Panel 2)

Abstract

National administrative data sets contain a great volume of detailed information that can be used to understand the relationship between officially recorded exposures and outcomes and to adjust for the influence of, for example, individual- and school-based confounding factors. However, many other potential confounders are unmeasured by administrative data sets, leaving the direct relationship between some exposures and outcomes unclear. One way to overcome this may be to triangulate findings from complementary studies that have common outcomes but different sets of exposures, thus filling the gap left by the other. We used two sources of data: (i) the National Pupil Database-Police National Computer linkage (NPD-PNC) and (ii) a linkage between the ALSPAC longitudinal cohort student, the national pupil database and local police records to estimate the relationship between persistent unauthorised absence from school and subsequent serious violent offending. The NPD-PNC linkage benefitted from a very large sample size and national coverage allowing a range of demographic factors to be examined with high statistical power while the ALSPAC linkage benefitted from self-report measures of individual, parenting and neighbourhood factors not present in the administrative records. Persistent unauthorised absence was defined as missing 10% or more of possible sessions in a term or school year (respectively) without authorisation. Logistic regression, controlling – via matching and/or covariate adjustment – for a range of potential confounders was used to examine the associations. In both datasets persistent absence was associated with approximately a doubling of the risk of subsequent violence perpetration. The paper will describe the process of triangulating the findings and address the remaining limitations in our understanding of how persistent absence relates to serious violence.

Authors

• Iain Brennan, University of Hull

• Rosie Cornish, University of Bristol

• Alison Teyhan, University of Bristol