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BackgroundPolicing in the UK is increasingly taking a public health approach to tackling crime. Birth cohort studies are potentially well-placed to provide evidence on the most important risk and preventative factors. Linking official police records to cohort data offers considerable potential for future research, but data privacy concerns mean achieving such linkage is challenging. As a pilot, the Ministry of Justice provided ALSPAC with an anonymous extract (cannot be linked to study data) detailing consenting participants' criminal convictions and cautions held within the Police National Computer (PNC).
Main AimTo use anonymised PNC data to inform the potential for future research using ALSPAC and individual-level linked crime data.
MethodsWe examine criminality (type, when and where committed) in the cohort participants who were sent for linkage to the PNC in 2013 when they were aged approximately 21 years (n=7358). We consider the representativeness of these participants by comparing their self-reported crime-related behaviours during adolescence to those of participants who did not consent to linkage (n=7604). Finally, we consider these self-reported measures by present-day crime linkage consent status.
ResultsOf those sent for PNC linkage, 885 were linked to a criminal record(s) comprising 2635 convictions and 1365 cautions. A third related to serious crimes, and >90% were committed in Avon and Somerset constabulary. Those sent for linkage self-reported fewer criminal behaviours than those not sent for linkage. Regarding present-day consent status, those who have explicitly opted-in generally self-report fewer criminal behaviours and have less missing data than those who have not responded to the consent campaign.
ConclusionIf future linkage to individual police records was only achieved for explicit consenters, this would under-estimate criminality in the cohort. The geographical clustering of the crimes means local police records, which are more detailed than those of the PNC, could also be used.

This paper presents a proposal for a data integration framework. The purpose of the framework is to locate automatically records of participants from the ALSPAC database (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) within its counterpart GPRD database (General Practice Research Database). The ALSPAC database is a collection of data from children and parents from before birth to late puberty. This collection contains several variables of interest for clinical researchers but we concentrate in asthma as a golden standard for evaluation of asthma has been made by a clinical researcher. The main component of the framework is a module called Mapper which locates similar records and performs record linkage. The mapper contains a library of similarity measures such Jaccard, Jaro-Winkler, Monge-Elkan, MatchScore, Levenstein and TFIDF similarity. Finally, the author evaluates the approach on quality of the mappings.

AbstractThe Pennsylvania Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Twin Registry was developed to capture a representative sample of multiple births and their parents in the state of Pennsylvania. The registry has two main efforts. The first began in 2012 through recruitment of adolescents in Pennsylvania schools. The second effort began in January 2019 in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Health to capture the birth cohort of twins born from 2007 to 2017. Study recruitment, sample demographics, focus and measures are provided, as well as future directions.

The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study: Adults As Parents And Children At Age 50

Background  Earlier research has distinguished five domains of Quality of life (QoL) for people with ID: material well‐being, development and activity, physical well‐being, social well‐being, and emotional well‐being. We investigated parents' perspectives on these domains and QoL for children and young adults with ID and hypothesized that parents' well‐being would be a predictive factor in QoL of their children with ID.Methods  Our longitudinal study administered questionnaires to parents at T0 (n = 147) and T1 (n = 108). The inclusion criteria were: (i) the child's age 0–24 years and (ii) the child's intellectual disability (IQ < 70 or IQ < 85 in combination with behavioural problems).Results  Social well‐being of parents (P ≤ 0.001), changes in parents' social well‐being (P ≤ 0.01) and changes in children's social well‐being (P ≤ 0.05) were strong predictors of QoL for children with ID. Emotional well‐being of children with ID (P ≤ 0.01), changes in children's emotional well‐being (P ≤ 0.01) and changes in emotional well‐being of parents (P ≤0.05) also predicted QoL of children with ID. Material well‐being of parents, and health, development and activity of the children were not predictors.Conclusion  Our study revealed that predictors of QoL in children and young adults with ID occurred in the following domains: physical well‐being (children), social well‐being (parents and children) and emotional well‐being (parents and children).

Rajhvajn Bulat L. A longitudinal study of depressiveness in children in public careInt J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 412–423 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare.The aim of this article is to analyse the challenges involved when making longitudinal observations of depressiveness in children raised in public care. The first measurement comprised 375 children from children's homes and foster families; however, most of the results are based on an analysis of the 139 children who participated in both parts of the research. We used the Child Depression Inventory and the anxiety/depression subscales of Youth Self Report and Child Behaviour Checklist as measures of depressiveness. The comparison of results from the first and second measurements showed that depressiveness in children in public care decreased over time. Children who grew up in children homes were, in the first measurement, more depressed than those living in foster families, but after five years that difference had disappeared. Furthermore, decrease in depressiveness is predominantly associated with less frequent delinquent, aggressive or hyperactive behaviour, less withdrawal and better control over uncomfortable emotions.

Foster children's family relationships have been one of the themes in a longitudinal study, starting with a disadvantaged group of children, 0–4 years of age when taken into care and placed in a children's home in Sweden. Seven rounds of data collection were carried out; the last two when the children were young adults. This article is about those 20 children in the study group who, in addition to temporary residential care at an early age, have experiences from foster care, either for the remainder of their childhood or before or after a period of reunion. Placement history is put in relation to family relationships, i.e. relationships to birth family and foster family. The categorisation in secure and insecure relationships or attachment patterns is based on interviews with the young adults, with a retrospect of previous relationships. The connection between placement history and family relationship is not obvious in this high‐risk group. However, inclusive attitudes from the foster family towards the child's family promote continuity and a sense of security, also in periods of reunion or re‐placement, and facilitate foster children's hard work in coming to terms with their family background and finding their own way.

Within a longitudinal study of children with congenital rubella, 85 Deaf Only adolescents, 85 Deaf Multihandicapped, and 34 Normal controls were studied with respect to impulsivity. The majority of the deaf group had severe or profound hearing loss. Prevalence of impulsivity and self abuse clearly differentiated Deaf Only from Deaf Multihandicapped. In adolescence, one-fifth of the Deaf Only and three-fifths of the Deaf Multihandicapped showed impulsivity; only Deaf Multihandicapped were self abusive. For both the Deaf Only and the Deaf Multihandicapped groups, impulsivity at adolescence was a continuation of this trait from earlier developmental periods. In contrast, self abuse was a transient behavior for the Deaf Only but was persistent for the Deaf Multihandicapped from early childhood. A meaningful discussion of impulsivity in deaf children necessitates differentiation of Deaf Only from Deaf Multihandicapped.