A Victimization Survey on the Topic of Hate Crime - A Web Probing Pretest of a Questionnaire Battery for the National Survey “Safety and Crime in Germany”

• In Event: Hate crime victimisation

Abstract

For the 2024 wave of the nationwide survey “Safety and Crime in Germany” a new battery question regarding hate crime victimization was developed. The goal was to better understand the experiences that are reported as hate crime by the respondents. Precise wording is crucial to avoid over-reporting, as vague questions could lead to misidentification of hate crimes, potentially inflating prevalence rates. While the overall survey has been tested for comprehensibility, the new set of hate crime questions hasn't been specifically tested on people who have been victims of hate crimes.
Therefore, this additional pretest is relevant as it provides insight into the perception of the question by relevant victim groups. For this purpose, the method of web probing is used to realize the cognitive pretest of the new question set.
The analysis of the participants' answers shows that the current wording of the questions in the survey is imprecise and therefore misleading. In addition, the evaluation of the pretest shows that certain characteristics (age, gender and social status) were answered very ambiguously by the participants.
The value of this research can be seen in the generation of possible approaches for improving the wording of hate crime question sets derived from the pretest. This is presented by explaining the reliability and validity problems of the new hate crime question set. Accordingly, new possibilities for reducing the complexity of the question wording will also be presented.

Author

• Tabitha Vos, Hamburg Police Department