Long-term trajectories of crime in the UK
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2025 5:15 am
Stephen Farrall, Deputy Head of the School of Law and Professor of Criminology at the University of Sheffield and colleagues, discuss the exciting long-term research underpinned by analyses of national survey data.
With almost 35 years of data (and in some cases more) for some of the UK’s oldest datasets, we are fast approaching a point in time when repeated cross-sectional surveys (such as the British Social china rcs data Attitudes Survey or the Crime Survey for England and Wales) can be analysed longitudinally, as well as cross-sectionally. This is a really exciting prospect, since a lot of the sorts of data which times series analysts have had to rely on come from official sources, such as recorded crime rates, rather than self-reported data (which is often taken to be a more reliable source when it comes to some matters).
Over the past two years, Emily Gray, Will Jennings, Colin Hay and I have been involved in a research project which has brought together into a small number of files some of the UK’s best known repeated cross-sectional surveys – namely the British Social Attitudes Survey, the Crime Survey for England and Wales and the British Election Studies. Each of these surveys we have collated into one file per survey, retaining the data at the individual level, which allows people to do a number of very, very exciting analyses.
With almost 35 years of data (and in some cases more) for some of the UK’s oldest datasets, we are fast approaching a point in time when repeated cross-sectional surveys (such as the British Social china rcs data Attitudes Survey or the Crime Survey for England and Wales) can be analysed longitudinally, as well as cross-sectionally. This is a really exciting prospect, since a lot of the sorts of data which times series analysts have had to rely on come from official sources, such as recorded crime rates, rather than self-reported data (which is often taken to be a more reliable source when it comes to some matters).
Over the past two years, Emily Gray, Will Jennings, Colin Hay and I have been involved in a research project which has brought together into a small number of files some of the UK’s best known repeated cross-sectional surveys – namely the British Social Attitudes Survey, the Crime Survey for England and Wales and the British Election Studies. Each of these surveys we have collated into one file per survey, retaining the data at the individual level, which allows people to do a number of very, very exciting analyses.