Submitted by J.W. Thulborn on Mon, 29/09/2025 - 13:41
The Centre for Analytic Criminology (CAC) commenced Phase 3 of the Peterborough Adolescent to Adult Development Study (PADS+), supported by a new grant from the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). To kickstart this new phase, the team is setting up the project which will unfold over the next couple of years. They are currently refreshing and modernising interview protocols, research materials and public engagement strategies.
Founded by Emeritus Professor Per-Olof Wikström and co-directed by Professor Kyle Treiber, the CAC promotes theory-guided empirical research into the causes of crime, to build a strong foundation for effective crime policy and practice.
Since 2002, the PADS+ longitudinal study has followed over 700 participants from the UK city of Peterborough to better understand their social lives, with a focus on criminal behaviour and its causes. Phase 1 covered adolescence (ages 12-17), and Phase 2 followed participants into young adulthood (ages 18-24), providing unique insights into crime involvement and its changes across these critical life stages. The study has produced new knowledge about the interaction between people and places and how this challenging dynamic can be studied. Phase 3 will follow participants into adulthood (aged 35 and over), enhancing knowledge about adult social lives, including crime in adulthood, and the pathways of development that lead to different social, and antisocial, outcomes.
Professor Treiber is Project Leader for PADS+ Phase 3 and has 20 years of experience in complex, multilevel longitudinal research. Professor Wikström designed PADS+ and was Principal Investigator across Phases 1 and 2 and Lead Project Advisor for Phase 3. Senior Researchers Dr Beth Hardie and Dr Gabriela Roman have more than 25 years of experience between them working with PADS+.
New Additions to the Team
The CAC also welcomed three new research assistants, each with unique research experience that will benefit the PADS+ project and Phase 3 activities.
Rhianna Dunkley has a psychology background with a focus on developmental and clinical psychology. She has worked with schools, clinics and neuro-rehabilitation centres to support intervention implementation. Her wider research interests include child emotional and social development within family research, including preventative early interventions and moral education. She is especially excited to put her interpersonal skills to work during the interview process, diving deep into participants’ stories to uncover how their lives have changed and evolved over the past ten years.
Katie Tu is now at the final stage of her PhD at the Institute of Criminology, where she conducted a large-scale study using SAT to examine how moral education from key social institutions influences juvenile crime involvement in Hong Kong. Her primary interests lie in juvenile delinquency and crime, moral development, prevention and intervention programs. Katie is looking forward to bringing a cross-cultural perspective to the project and is particularly interested in how moral context and institutional influences continue to shape participants' life paths over time.
Giulia Spaeth has a background in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, specialising in child and adolescent mental health. She previously worked at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, contributing to a neuroimaging study which explored the neural circuits underlying anxiety. Her research interests focus primarily on the intersection of neuroscience and behavioral science during adolescence, a critical period for cognitive and emotional development. She is eager to apply her knowledge of cognitive development, particularly in the areas of self-control and decision-making, to better understand how these processes evolve from adolescence into adulthood.
Situational Action Theory (SAT)
Professor Per-Olof Wikström developed Situational Action Theory (SAT), a general, dynamic and mechanism-based theory of the causes of crime which aims to explain it in all places, at all times. This explanation centers on the interaction between people and their environment and how these interactions change. SAT underscores the importance of identifying key (plausible) causal processes involved in the explanation of crime and criminal careers.
SAT explains crime as moral action – acts that break rules of conduct. Its core proposition is that people commit acts of crime because they see them as acceptable under the circumstances or fail to adhere to moral rules of conduct when pressured to do otherwise due to insufficient controls. Consequently, stability and change in people’s crime involvement is a consequence of stability and change in their interactions with settings that shape their perception and choice of crime as an alternative.
Phase 3 – A natural progression
The PADS+ research team is gearing up for Phase 3 ten years after the last round of data collection, and a lot has changed, both for the participants and the study. In this new chapter, the PADS+ team will continue to explore how participants’ lives and social relationships have evolved into adulthood, and how these shifts may impact their behavior over time. Still grounded in Situational Action Theory (SAT), Phase 3 will address a number of research questions, including:
- What is the nature of crime involvement during adulthood? How do criminal careers develop into adulthood?
- Do the same causal factors explain crime involvement in adulthood as in adolescence? Do these factors and their roles change in adulthood, and if so in what way?
- How do social relationships evolve from adolescence into adulthood? How does the relative influence of different social institutions change over time? How do social relationships shape crime propensities, criminogenic exposure, and crime involvement in adulthood?
The study utilises a variety of methods, including interviewer-led questionnaires, innovative space-time budgets, detailed event calendars, experimental scenarios, and cognitive tasks, to explore participants’ experiences, characteristics, perceptions and actions.
To prepare for the new data collection, the PADS+ team has started with a digital and physical spring cleaning –. The PADS+ team has been revisiting over twenty years of PADS+ material online and offline. The team is familiarising themselves with the documentation and procedures from previous phases and organising key materials for the new one. It has been a great opportunity for them to revisit the knowledge and experience gained through decades long longitudinal research and apply this to the next phase.
What’s changed?
In the ten years since Phase 2, much has changed in how we approach research projects, from communication methods and data collection tools to data security. As Phase 3 begins, the PADS+ team is updating and developing a range of resources to bring the project up to date while maintaining the study’s high data quality, data security, and ethical standards. For example, they have been updating resources relating to remote interview and online surveys, which can enhance participant accessibility and engagement. These new resources ensure PADS+ research protocols are informed, modernised and practical.
Technology has advanced significantly in the last 10 years, and a big element of the new team’s work has been incorporating new technologies into historic systems, to support and streamline PADS+ research. The team is migrating to new digital programs, developing new guidelines, and collaborating with the informatics team to ensure that new data management practices meet rigorous standards. At the same time, they are capitalising on opportunities to enhance data protection and enable data sharing, ultimately improving both the security and accessibility of PADS+ data.
As participants have grown from teenagers to fully fledged adults, their lives have naturally changed and become more complex, characterised by changing responsibilities, relationships and activity fields. A wide variety of data collection tools have been used in Phases 1 and 2 to study participants’ lives and behaviours and the key factors that shape them from adolescence to adulthood. In Phase 3, these research instruments will be updated as we follow participants into adulthood. For example, the participant questionnaire will include new topics, such as workplace environments and parenting experiences, which will be increasingly important dimensions of their adult lives. Instruments will also look more closely at online contexts and behaviours.
Finally, new communication plans are under development to share news from the PADS+ project. These include updating our website and using social media. More information can be found on the CAC website (www.cac.crim.ac.uk).
What’s coming next?
Once all Phase 3 research instruments and protocols are finalised, the team will launch its new participant tracking protocol, designed to reflect changes in accessibility and communication since participants were last contacted. PADS+ boasts an impressive retention rate over Phase 1 and 2 and the Phase 3 protocol will build on previous protocols to establish an innovative contemporary tracking strategy that will be critical for engaging participants after 10 years.
With research protocols nearing completion, the team is also exploring how findings from PADS+ may shape policy, prevention, and intervention strategies. Key areas of exploration include the role of moral education, cognitive nurturing, and selection into key action and developmental contexts. The team aims to bridge theory, evidence, and practice to ensure research insights translate into meaningful real-world solutions to the problem of crime.