NCJ Number
209662
Journal
European Journal of Criminology Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2005 Pages: 139-159
Date Published
April 2005
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This study compared Flemish-speaking and French-speaking populations of Belgium to explore problems of cross-cultural equivalence in measuring constructs of "fear of crime" itself and other constructs used to explain it.
Abstract
The study focused on data obtained from Belgium's 1998 Safety Monitor, the second edition of a Federal computer-assisted telephone interview survey that included responses to questions on fear of crime. The sample size for the study was 2,917, of whom 1,495 were Flemish-speaking and 1,422 were French-speaking. The Safety Monitor used four indicators to measure fear of crime: avoidance of certain neighborhood areas considered unsafe, not opening the door to strangers at night as a security measure, avoiding leaving home at night, and having feelings of being unsafe. Perceptions of physical incivilities in the neighborhood were measured with two items: perception of litter in the street and "dog dirt in the street." Other items measured perceptions of threat in the neighborhood and perceptions of police effectiveness. Assessment of cross-cultural invariance within the aforementioned concepts used confirmatory factor analysis in a linear structural equation approach (LISREL 8.50). A theoretically relevant exploratory model with fear of crime as the dependent variable was tested. Both the dependent and independent constructs in the model were assessed for their cross-cultural equivalence. In principle, this produces a model that is free from cultural bias. The current study found no evidence of measurement variance between the two cultural groups. 1 table, 4 figures, and 46 references