“Community Empowerment”
Group
Neighborhood Fear of Crime
Measurements
As one of
the components of the “Community Empowerment”
program is to reduce the fear of crime in the local area, a first
step in planning this component is to analyze the question. How do
we determine what the level of fear of crime in our neighborhood is
currently at? By determining the current level of fear, the outcome
of the program can be measured; the pre-intervention level of fear
can be measured against the post-intervention level of fear. Two
methods of measurement are proposed; a self-report survey for
community residents, and an observational study of people
walking/jogging in the community after dark. These methods will be
discussed in two parts:
Part 1 – Self-Report
Survey
The
self-report survey will be sent out, with a pre-paid response
envelope, to every residence in the community, and will measure fear
on a family unit basis. There is no associated codebook, as the
survey is based on scale of 1 to 10. There will be no inducements
offered to complete the survey, and no identification of respondents.
These parameters allow us to target the community specifically and to
standardize responses. The survey itself
is presented as follows:
Hello Citizen,
We are asking for a few
moments of your time to measure fear of crime in our community. This
is to aid the “Community Empowerment”
program to determine how valid our methods are. Your response will
be anonymous, and will be valuable in making this community safety
program work! The questions we ask are of the family as a whole, so
please try to check with everyone in the family.
Please answer the following
questions on a scale of 1 through 10, with 1 indicating no level of
fear, and 10 representing the highest level of fear.
- How afraid of crime in general is your family? _____
- How afraid of property crime (burglary, car theft) is your family? _____
- How afraid of violent crime is your family? _____
- How afraid of crime in school is your family? _____
- How afraid of minor crime (vandalism, juvenile truancy) is your family? _____
Part II – The
Observational Method
The
observational method is based on the premise that “feeling unsafe
walking alone after dark” is one indicator of fear of crime
(Tseloni & Zarafonitou, 2008, abstract). The number of people
walking alone after dark can be measured pre-test and post-test in
the following manner. We obtain permission from (5) home owners to
park in their driveway. The homes we choose to observe from must be
dispersed throughout the community for thorough observation. Then
the observers make a visual count of people walking alone, accounted
by hour, from dusk to five hours past sunset. These number can be
compared pre-program to post-program, but we should be aware that
seasonal changes can also account for confounds in these numbers, so
it is best to perform the post-test in the same time of year as the
pre-test; this may mean that for the best measurement results, we may
need to wait some time after the program has been implemented to
conduct the post-test.
References
Tseloni, A. and Zarafonitou,
C. (2008). Fear of crime and victimization:A multivariate multilevel
analysis of competing measurements. European Journal of
Criminology:vol. 5 no. 4. doi: 10.1177/1477370808095123
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