NCJ Number
178503
Journal
Criminal Justice Review Volume: 23 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 1998 Pages: 29-50
Date Published
1998
Length
22 pages
Annotation
Because the literature on fear of crime consistently finds much higher levels of reported fear of crime among women than among men, the current study used 1973-1994 data from the General Social Survey and Uniform Crime Reports to determine whether fear of crime increased over the period, whether change was due to individual attitude change or to population turnover, whether the gender gap in reported fear of crime narrowed or widened over time, and relevant variables that accounted for change in the gender gap.
Abstract
Logistic regression techniques were employed to study fear of crime as the dichotomous variable. The decomposition of trends in fear of crime suggested that changing attitudes within cohorts were associated with most of the 8-percent increase in fear of crime, although some of this change was attributed to population turnover. Women were much more likely to fear crime but men increasingly feared crime over time, resulting in a narrowing of the gender gap. This finding suggested that men may have come to realize their high risk of being victimized and thus reported more fear of crime. Although no variables explained the gender gap in fear of crime, hierarchical linear models revealed violent crime increased men's fear of crime over time. 43 references, 7 tables, and 2 figures