Loneliness, Satisfaction and Fear of Crime - A Test for Non-Recursive Effects

• NCJ Number: 96751
• Journal: Canadian Journal of Criminology Volume: 27 Issue: 1 Dated: (January 1985) Pages: 1-13
• Author(s): R A Silverman; L W Kennedy
• Date Published: 1985
• Length: 13 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: Canada
• Note: Revised vesion of paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Denver, November 1983.

Annotation

This article focuses on fear of crime and explores the relationships between sex, age, and number of people in a household (as exogenous variables) and loneliness and satisfaction (as endogenous variables).

Abstract

The study hypothesized that loneliness and fear are reciprocally related, i.e., loneliness leads to fear and fear leads to loneliness. Similarly, satisfaction and fear are hypothesized to be reciprocally related, i.e., loneliness leads to lower levels of satisfaction. It was anticipated that social isolation (living alone) would lead to loneliness, that younger people would be more lonely than older people, and that older people would be generally less satisfied than younger people. The data for the study were drawn from the Edmonton Area Study and Winnipeg Area Study for 1981. The final response rate for Winnipeg was 74 percent; the median age of respondents was 43 years, with 59 percent females and 41 percent males. The final response rate for Edmonton was 75 percent; the median age of respondents was 35 years, with 51.5 percent males and 48.5 percent females. The LISREL IV program, which takes a variance/covariance matrix for the modeled variables as input and provides maximum likelihood estimates of the coefficients in a set of linear structural equations among the variables, was used to test the model. Results reveal that males and females are so different in their responses that separate models have to be built for the two gender groups. In the male model, number of people in the household affects loneliness, and age has a direct effect on fear. In the female model, age has a significant effect on loneliness, and loneliness leads to satisfaction. Further, for females, living alone creates fear more than loneliness. For males, living alone is related to loneliness, but loneliness does not necessarily lead to fear. Additional studies should be undertaken to determine whether males living alone experience more loneliness than do similarly situated females. Thirty-one references and two figures are included.