School and home-based responding in an online youth crime survey: A natural experiment related to school lockdown in spring 2020

Abstract

Our study draws from a natural experiment created by the school lockdowns in Finland during the 2020 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic to compare at-school and home-based responses to an online youth crime survey. Using our quasi-experimental design, we examine how at-home responses during the Covid-19 lockdown affected the sample composition and reported prevalence of offences in the nationally representative Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study 2020 (FSRD-2020) survey (N = 5503). We compare these within-year changes in 2020 to the earlier FSRD-2016 survey (N = 5955) that did not involve a transition to at-home response. According to our analysis, the share of males decreased in remote schooling. We also detected a decrease in reported offences during lockdown (remote school response) in several types of offences, net of observed compositional changes. The findings suggest that at-school data collection helps secure more inclusive samples and encourages students to self-report their offending behaviours.