A population-based cross-sectional study examining homicides among community-dwelling older adults in Victoria, Australia: A study protocol

Briohny Kennedy; Lyndal Bugeja; Jake Olivier; Sjaan Koppel; Jeremy Dwyer; Joseph Ibrahim

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0292837

A population-based cross-sectional study examining homicides among community-dwelling older adults in Victoria, Australia: A study protocol

PLoS One. 2023 Oct 13;18(10):e0292837. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292837. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Briohny Kennedy¹, Lyndal Bugeja¹, Jake Olivier², Sjaan Koppel³, Jeremy Dwyer⁴, Joseph Ibrahim¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, Southbank, Victoria, Australia.
² School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
³ Monash University Accident Research Centre, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.
⁴ Coroners Prevention Unit, Coroners Court of Victoria, Southbank, Victoria, Australia.

Abstract

Background: There is a need for both descriptive and analytical evidence on the factors associated with older adult homicide. The current landscape is insufficient because most published research is confined to the United States, and contains insufficient data about the homicide context. This study protocol describes the proposed method for examining the characteristics and factors associated with older adult homicide in the Australian state of Victoria, using data generated for the criminal and coronial investigation into these deaths stored in the Victorian Homicide Register (VHR). Outcomes will support practitioners, policy makers and other key stakeholders to strengthen prevention strategies to reduce the risk of future homicides among older Victorians.

Methods: This study will comprise a single-jurisdiction population-based cross-sectional design to analyse consecutive cases of homicide among community-dwelling older adults in Victoria, Australia for the period 2001 to 2015. All homicides of adults aged 18 years and older, and where the Coroner's investigation is completed at data extraction will be included. Variables will be selected in accordance with elements of the social-ecological model (i.e., individual, interpersonal, incident, and community). This will include: socio-demographic characteristics; presence of mental or physical illness; deceased-offender relationship; nature of any abuse between the deceased and offender; incident location and weapon used; the presence of alcohol or drugs; and criminal justice outcomes. Homicide rates per 100,000 population will be calculated for older adults (aged 65 years and older) and younger adults (aged 18-64 years), and compared as rate ratios using Poisson regression. Descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation will be generated for factors associated with homicide for older compared to younger adults. Homicide typologies based on deceased-offender relationship and motive will be explored within group and family homicides will be compared between older and younger adults.

Copyright: © 2023 Kennedy et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Aged
Criminals*
Cross-Sectional Studies
Homicide*
Humans
Independent Living
United States
Victoria / epidemiology

Grants and funding

BK’s PhD work was supported through an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, ID:22309012 (www.dese.gov.au/research-block-grants/research-training-program). LB is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award DE190101276 (www.arc.gov.au). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. LB and JD were both employed by the Coroners Prevention Unit, Coroners Court of Victoria during the development of the Victorian Homicide Register (the data source). The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors (JD and LB), but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. There was no additional external funding received for this study.