Perceptions of fear of crime in college and community populations

• In Event: Methodological Issues in Fear of Crime Research

Abstract

There is some debate in the scholarly literature about the usefulness of using samples of college students as a proxy for community sentiments. This study compared perceptions about crime, fear of crime and policing from two waves of surveys conducted in 2011 and 2013. Respondents included random samples of community residents and convenience samples of undergraduate students from the same city. The results revealed that there were significant differences in the perceptions between the two samples. These findings support a growing body of empirical work identifying the shortcomings of using students in public opinion research that is intended to represent community sentiments. Given these findings we question if this practice is methodologically sound, and whether researchers need to more carefully scrutinize the generalizability of findings from samples of students.

Authors

• Nicholas A. Jones, University of Regina

• Rick Ruddell, University of Regina