Scalable Bayesian Inference for Bradley--Terry Models with Ties: An Application to Honour Based Abuse

Abstract: Honour based abuse covers a wide range of family abuse including female genital mutilation and forced marriage. Safeguarding professionals need to identify where abuses are happening in their local community to best support those at risk of these crimes and take preventative action. However, there is little local data about these kinds of crime. To tackle this problem, we ran comparative judgement surveys to map abuses at local level, where participants where shown pairs of wards and asked which had a higher rate of honour based abuse. In previous comparative judgement studies, participants reported fatigue associated with comparisons between areas with similar levels of abuse. Allowing for tied comparisons reduces fatigue, but increase the computational complexity when fitting the model. We designed an efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to fit a model with ties, allowing for a wide range of prior distributions on the model parameters. Working with South Yorkshire Police and Oxford Against Cutting, we mapped the risk of honour based abuse at community level in two counties in the UK.