A snapshot of anti-social behaviour
Posted on 03. Jan, 2010 by admin in Geography, Science
The most comprehensive picture of how people in every neighbourhood in England feel about anti-social behaviour caused by alcohol and drugs is being drawn by a scientist at the University of Portsmouth.
Joanna Taylor, of the Department of Geography, won £62,000 over three years from the Economic and Social Research Council open competition to enable her to complete her PhD.
She aims to demonstrate how complex data analysis of the British Crime Survey and other rich sources of information including Ordnance Survey and Census data can be used to provide snapshots of anti-social behaviour in every community.
Joanna’s research will give a clear picture of neighbourhoods across England, the smallest, most focused study ever carried out on a national scale.
The data could, in turn, be used by government to make policy decisions and direct funds. It would also give local authorities a close-up picture of their communities and enable them to target resources to reduce anti-social behaviour.
Joanna said: “The British Crime Survey is a very large scale victimisation survey which gives detailed information about experiences of crime. However, to date it has been unable to be used to calculate findings at the neighbourhood level.
“I am hoping my studies will result in a statistical model that uses the British Crime Survey and other data sources to provide a useful picture of peoples’ perceptions of anti-social behaviour caused by drugs and alcohol in their neighbourhood which can then be put into use by agencies at all levels.”
The results of Joanna’s research will be circulated at conferences and workshops over the coming months and the full results will be published within the next three years. She will be supervised by Dr Liz Twigg and the PhD will extend and improve the methods which have been developed and used widely by Dr Twigg to pinpoint health-related behaviours such as alcohol consumption, obesity and smoking. The methods have been recognised by several government agencies as a useful tool in small area profiling .
Dr Twigg said: “People’s perceptions of crime and anti-social behaviour are important because they affect decisions to move house or whether to become involved in neighbourhood activism.
“Someone might live in an area where drugs are dealt nearby or where there is frequent alcohol-related rowdiness and not see it as a major threat to their own well-being, while another person might find much lower levels of anti-social behaviour as very threatening.
“Perceptions of crime can be just as problematic as actual or observed levels of neighbourhood disorder.”
The ESRC funding for the project includes £9,000 for Joanna’s complex quantitative skills involved in survey analysis and statistical modelling in recognition that such skills are becoming rarer among scientists of all disciplines.
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