So he was a '5', is now a '1', and personally averages himself as a '3'. Closed questions, it is argued, sensitise and direct respondents toward the set of answers offered, and the empirical evidence supports this. They found that 23 per cent of the sample considered crime to be a serious personal problem. It would appear that measurements of the extent of the fear of crime are grossly sensitive to the nature of the question asked. Given that open questions allow respondents the opportunity to provide their 'own' answers, uncontaminated by research priorities, we conclude that closed questions greatly over-estimate the incidence of the fear of crime.
Closed questions are the staple of many crime surveys.
Because of this, the surveys may be over-estimating the fear of crime by as much as 23 times. It seems that surveys will tell us little about the fear of crime, but a lot about the nature of the questions used. This issue is important as it must be remembered that the vast majority of crime and fear of crime surveys employ closed questions. Given that many social surveys rely upon closed questions to assess attitudes towards a range of issues, this is indeed a worrying finding. Two important issues will be addressed in this final section.