Freedom of Information (FOI) as a data collection tool for social scientists.

This paper evaluates a method of generating a unique dataset that has been underused-a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. The UK's FOI Act came into force in 2005, allowing the public to make requests of publicly held data. We set out to understand the determinants of the quality responses to FOI requests. We also explain how requests can be made and provide suggestions to construct effective data-driven requests. We applied for data on hate crime from all police forces and on uptake of maternity leave from all universities. We find that observable characteristics of the local area, police force and universities neither determine whether the request was fulfilled, nor the speed of response, suggesting that the data from these FOI requests are representative of the institutions from which they were requested.

Yawning while scrolling? Examining gender differences in the association between smartphone use and sleep quality.

The negative consequences of deteriorated sleep have been widely acknowledged. Therefore, research on the determinants of poor sleep is crucial. A factor potentially contributing to poor sleep is the use of a smartphone. This study aims to measure the association between overall daily smartphone use and both sleep quality and sleep duration. To this end, we exploit data on 1,889 first-year university students. Compared with previous research we control for a large set of observed confounding factors. Higher overall smartphone use is associated with lower odds of experiencing a good sleep. In addition, we explore heterogeneous differences by socioeconomic factors not yet investigated. We find that the negative association between smartphone use and sleep quality is mainly driven by female participants.

Intervention time series analysis of crime rates: The case of sentence reform in Virginia.

We review the basic concepts of intervention analysis in the context of structural time series models and we apply this methodology to investigate the possible reduction in monthly crime rates reported from January 1984 up to and including December 2010 after Virginia abolished parole and reformed sentencing in January 1995. We find that the change in legislation has significantly reduced the burglary rates and to a lesser extent the murder rates in Virginia. The robustness of our results is investigated with an automatic detection of breaks procedure as well as with analyses of quarterly rather than monthly data.

The effect of childhood conduct disorder on human capital.

This paper estimates the longer-term effects of childhood conduct disorder on human capital accumulation and violent and criminal behavior later in life using data of Australian twins. We measure conduct disorder with a rich set of indicators based on diagnostic criteria from psychiatry. Using ordinary least squares and twin fixed effects estimation approaches, we find that early-age (pre-18) conduct disorder problems significantly affect both human capital accumulation and violent and criminal behavior over the life course. In addition, we find that conduct disorder is more deleterious if these behaviors occur earlier in life.