Do official records and self-reports of offending identify the same individuals? And does this depend on the context and/or individual characteristics? These are critical questions at the heart of crime and violence research. Official records and self-reports represent the two primary methods for measuring offending. However, official records only capture the “tip of the iceberg” as not all crimes are reported to the police. Additionally, there is bias in which individuals and which offences are decided to be recorded as criminal incidents by the police, and there are examples of misidentification errors. On the other hand, self-reports of offending via confidential questionnaires or interviews can introduce different biases, including social desirability (e.g., response falsification), recall error, and selection bias – as individuals who have engaged in criminal activity are less likely to respond to research surveys and interviews.

Few studies have compared the two measures of offending, with most of these coming from the US. While this evidence suggests that both measures are generally concordant, self-reports identify higher rates of criminal offending and a significant proportion of individuals with criminal records fail to self-report. The strength of agreement between official records and self-report has been found to vary by crime types and sociodemographic groups. Cultural context may also represent an important factor influencing the agreement between official records and self-reports given known discrepancies in the prevalence of crime and violence in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) compared to high-income countries (HIC). However, due to a lack of studies with both official records and self-reports of crime from countries outside of the US, the role of national context is poorly understood.