Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This research project was an attempt to improve upon the current measures of the fear of crime via the design of new survey questions. The fear of crime is an increasingly important measure of citizens' quality of life. The Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions has adopted the fear of crime as a 'Best Value Performance Indicator' and many police services and local community safety partnerships aim to reduce the fear of crime, so need reliable measures of fear. Concerns remain, however, as to the most accurate way of measuring fear of crime in surveys of citizens and residents in local areas. A range of methodological issues have been identified by previous research which cumulatively raise the possibility that the fear of crime has been significantly misrepresented. Many commentators suspect that the fear of crime is being exaggerated by survey research, and this project aimed to develop questions that would redress that. The questions developed were piloted and tested in a survey of British citizens, which revealed that far fewer people frequently experienced crime-related anxieties than had previously been thought to be the case. A later study on the fear of crime by the same Principal Investigator, based on British Crime Survey data and titled Experience and Expression in the Fear of Crime, 2003-2004, is held at the UK Data Archive under SN 5822.

Main Topics:

Topics covered included fear of crime, frequency and severity of feelings of fear and feelings of safety or otherwise walking alone in local area at night. Data were also gathered on age, gender, social class, household size, number of children in household and region.

The questions were asked as part of an omnibus survey of approximately 1000 respondents conducted b

Face-to-face interview