Dutch Research Council programmes expand CBS research options

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Statistics Netherlands (CBS) has been assessed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) in order to determine whether it meets the criteria for participating in research programmes as a research organisation. ‘This makes it easier for us to carry out research that is relevant to society, in partnership with universities and partners in the wider community,’ explains senior statistical researcher Marjolijn Das.
NWO invests in pioneering research and research facilities, and also plays a key role in selecting research proposals for funding. In many cases, only researchers who are employed by a university are allowed to submit a research proposal to the NWO, but sometimes researchers from other research institutions are also able to submit applications. ‘The fact that CBS has been found to meet the criteria set by the NWO means that we can now submit research proposals in partnership with other parties,’ explains Heike Goudriaan. ‘Without this outcome, this kind of partnership would no longer be possible.’

Goudriaan is coordinator at ECHO (the Centre of Expertise for CBS and Institutions of Higher Education), where she manages CBS’s relationships with universities and universities of applied sciences. For example, some CBS staff members also hold a professorship or work as a senior lecturer at another research institution. Such positions are funded by CBS. Other colleagues at CBS are working on PhD research and receive supervision for this at a university. ‘The fact that CBS can continue to submit research applications to NWO, including as a co-applicant, means that we can work even more easily and effectively with our academic partners,’ says Goudriaan.

A strong partnership

‘CBS and the academic partners complement each other, and that helps to improve the quality of our research,’ explains Goudriaan. ‘CBS benefits from these research partnerships because they help sharpen our methodological expertise and scientific knowledge on the themes that are relevant to society. And the benefits flow in both directions: CBS is the country’s leading expert on collecting, processing and analysing very large amounts of data, and this is a significant advantage for our research partners. We also have expertise on the substantive, technical and methodological aspects of that data.’

Most CBS staff are involved in statistical scientific research, whether directly or indirectly. ‘In that sense, the ability for us to submit proposals to the NWO simply reflects the reality of our work,’ says Das. ‘Virtually all our statistics are deeply rooted in scientific research from start to finish – from sampling theory and the design of our questionnaires, to the methodology of statistical analysis and the specialist knowledge of the field that helps us to choose which statistics we should produce.’

New knowledge and products

CBS has been submitting research proposals to the NWO with other organisations since last year, and new research projects have already got underway.

‘Our work here at CBS is arranged into work programmes,’ explains Das. ‘These are based on our strategy document, which identifies the key societal challenges that we will focus on in a given multi-year period. That programme reflects the statutory duties of CBS: to conduct independent statistical research and publish reliable statistics on social and economic themes. Collaborative research projects with other research institutes must fit into one of our thematic work programmes, and thereby help us to fulfil our statutory duty. So, research projects are expected to provide added value – to generate new knowledge that will lead to new statistical products.’

Young people and organised crime

Marjolijn Das is currently working on a research programme that is funded by the NWO. The programme is known as EPIC: Explaining, Preventing, and Intervening in organized Crime involvement.

This involves a consortium of researchers, policymakers and partners in the field (such as the police and local authorities). Das is supervising PhD researcher Julie Erber, together with three other co-supervisors: Brenda Bos of CBS and Steve van de Weijer and Arjan Blokland of the Netherlands Institute for Crime and Law Enforcement Research (NSCR). Das’s role as supervisor is part of her position as endowed Professor of Urban Statistics at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences).

Erber’s PhD project seeks to answer some important questions: to what extent are young people exposed to organised crime in their social network, and what are the consequences of this? Which social networks are young people part of? And which factors increase the risk of criminal involvement and which factors reduce this risk?

‘EPIC was launched in 2022,’ says Das. ‘Arjan Blokland, who is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, took the lead on behalf of the NSCR. The NWO funded the research because the subject of young people and organised crime is currently an important social issue.’

Exploring the role of social networks

CBS is involved in one of the projects within EPIC. Blokland approached CBS partly because of its unique dataset on personal networks, which it developed in-house. The dataset makes it possible to explore the role of young people’s social network in whether or not they become involved in organised crime. ‘For a long time, the scale and scope of the dataset on personal networks was unique in the world. Now similar datasets have also been developed in Sweden and Denmark.’

‘The social network dataset includes five different settings in which people may meet each other,’ Das explains. ‘They are: family, housemates, neighbours, colleagues and classmates. This is based on data registered by government bodies, such as the population register.’

‘The social network dataset can be seen as a pool of potential contacts that people may have. We are able to link this to police data on suspected offenders, and from this we can calculate the extent to which individual young people are exposed to criminality within their social network. Obviously, this is highly sensitive information in terms of privacy, and CBS takes a range of measures to prevent the disclosure of information that could be traced back to known individuals, businesses or organisations. For instance, the researchers never see any information that could identify individuals, such as names and addresses. All such data is pseudonymised.’

‘Participation in NWO programmes will bring many benefits for CBS, as a research-oriented organisation,’ says Das. ‘Previous research has shown that young people with more people in their social network who are suspected of criminal offences, are themselves at greater risk of becoming involved in crime.’ Thanks to the PhD research being done by Julie Erber, who is affiliated with the Netherlands Institute for Crime and Law Enforcement Research, in-depth research can now be conducted into this important social issue. She will be working full-time on this subject for four years. This is helping to improve CBS output. ‘We can use the model to identify statistical trends and publish new scientific articles, for example.’

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