Reactions to Crime Project, 1977 [Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco]: Survey on Fear of Crime and Citizen Behavior

This survey was conducted by the Center for Urban Affairs
and Policy Research at Northwestern University to gather information
for two projects that analyzed the impact of crime on the lives of
city dwellers. These projects were the Reactions to Crime (RTC)
Project, which was supported by the United States Department of
Justice's National Institute of Justice as part of its Research
Agreements Program, and the Rape Project, supported by the National
Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape, a subdivision of the
National Institute of Mental Health. Both investigations were
concerned with individual behavior and collective reactions to
crime. The Rape Project was specifically concerned with sexual assault
and its consequences for the lives of women. The three cities selected
for study were Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. A total of
ten neighborhoods were chosen from these cities along a number of
dimensions -- ethnicity, class, crime, and levels of organizational
activity. In addition, a small city-wide sample was drawn from each
city. Reactions to crime topics covered how individuals band together
to deal with crime problems, individual responses to crime such as
property marking or the installation of locks and bars, and the impact
of fear of crime on day-to-day behavior -- for example, shopping and
recreational patterns. Respondents were asked several questions that
called for self-reports of behavior, including events and conditions
in their home areas, their relationship to their neighbors, who they
knew and visited around their homes, and what they watched on TV and
read in the newspapers. Also included were a number of questions
measuring respondents' perceptions of the extent of crime in their
communities, whether they knew someone who had been a victim, and what
they had done to reduce their own chances of being victimized.
Questions on sexual assault/rape included whether the respondent
thought this was a neighborhood problem, if the number of rapes in the
neighborhood were increasing or decreasing, how many women they
thought had been sexually assaulted or raped in the neighborhood in
the previous year, and how they felt about various rape prevention
measures, such as increasing home security, women not going out alone
at night, women dressing more modestly, learning self-defense
techniques, carrying weapons, increasing men's respect of women, and
newspapers publishing the names of known rapists. Female respondents
were asked whether they thought it likely that they would be sexually
assaulted in the next year, how much they feared sexual assault when
going out alone after dark in the neighborhood, whether they knew a
sexual assault victim, whether they had reported any sexual assaults
to police, and where and when sexual assaults took place that they
were aware of. Demographic information collected on respondents
includes age, race, ethnicity, education, occupation, income, and
whether the respondent owned or rented their home.

Tags: assault, cities, crime, crime-prevention, mass-media, newspapers, rape, recreational-activities, shopping-behavior, social-attitudes
Organization: Department of Justice