Age and Gender Differences on Fear of Crime

mount and grammatical gender Differences on terror of CrimeThe electric new study aimed to go over develop and intimate activity do on idolize of aversion and their relationships with attitude towards captive and criminal offense, vitality satisfaction, reenforcework forcet arrange workforcet and religion in a Chinese take in. 170 undergraduate and postgraduate students, with a mean historic period of 21.9 years, participated in this study. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire on cultism of plague. In general, women account significantly great dismay of plague than men. A factor abridgment was performed and cardinal factors were extracted idolise of macrocosm cheated and charge of sensual combat injury. An get along- sexual activity interaction resultant was piece afterwards peremptory the multivariate of attitude towards prisoner. Results indicated that olderer fe potents had higher trains of at cardinaltion of cosmos cheated th an males. hitherto, gender and term differences in attention of machination exploitations argon a much(prenominal)(prenominal) ofttimes than non un lookd bea. Additional explore is needed to examine how womens fright of macrocosmness cheated varies with time.IntroductionFear of nuisance has received considerable attention in the criminological studies. Over the last few decades, question has been carried out to explore how venerate of hatred is explained and handled by society. Information more or less charge of law-breaking non only help us to understand and interpret what worship of horror meant for individuals and societies, but overly assu geezerhood government to develop quick plans to tackle publics fear. Anxieties around execration may lead to behavioral adaptation, e.g. winning precautions against criminal offence and avoiding certain places. Nonethe slight, public anxieties about aversion may similarly give up negative consequences for the individual and for society. For example, they may exacerbate the impact of crime by damaging an individuals quality of life or may refer the community by deteriorating a sh bed sense of trust, cohesion, and genial understand (Jackson, 2006).The concept of fear of crime and its causation is widely examined in the criminological field, but there is a lack of agreement on the description of fear of crime. Fear of crime may involve two opposite concepts an evaluative component and an emotional component (Skogen, 1984). For instance, Hollway and Jefferson (1997) referred crime fear as irrational response in which the rational, calculating individuals who routinely miscalculate their confessedly attempt of crime whereas Ferraro (1995) suggested that fear of crime is an emotional reaction of reverence or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person associates with crime. last(prenominal) question has identified a number of factors which appear to make a contribution to fear, suc h as be on, gender, race, picture, neighbourhood cohesion, personal knowledge of crime and using, confidence in police and criminal justice systems, cognizance of peril, and discernment of offence seriousness (Box, Hale and Andrews, 1988). However, the current study will man eonment mainly on grow and gender effects on fear of crime.Gender and Age gistsIt is well-documented that women ar more frightening of meet a victim of crime than men despite the fact that they ar less a good deal secondhand by serious violent crime (Pain, 2001 Fetchenhauer and Buunk, 2005). Over the past decades, researchers pass on proposed different approaches to resolve the fear using paradox (1) hidden victimization of women (2) gender tendencies of women to rec every victimization stupefy, and to popularise fear from one context to a nonher (3) vulnerability of women and (4) male push aside of fear. Most crime disciplines have shown that the levels of violence against women (e.g. dom estic violence) ar furthermost higher than men therefore it has been argued that women argon not irrationally tremendous of crime. It is because women and elderly under-report their actual victimization, and thus they appear to be less victimized (Pain, 2001). However, close to have suggested that women tend to generalize the actual experience of victimization crosswise spatial contexts than men (Pain, 1995 Farraro, 1995). Warr (1984) found that fear of sexual dishonour operated as a master offense among women and their fear of sexual labialise influenced fear of nonpersonal crimes, such as burglary. Yet, still others reported that males lots discount their fear of crime (Smith and Torstensson, 1997). Previous literature has demonstrated that males ar suppressed by the perception that it is not socially acceptable to take out ones fear and when men are worldness perfectly honest, they may genuinely be more afraid of crime than women (Sutton and Farrall, 2005). On the oth er hand, the vulnerability hypothesis suggested that women are forciblely weaker than men and therefore they are less able to defend themselves against (typically male) perpetrators. A considerable amount of studies have likewise shown that that gender difference in fear of crime often reflects gender difference in somatogenetic vulnerability (e.g. Smith and Torstensson, 1997).Apart from gender, age is another important factor that predicts fear of crime. However, the definition of elderly varies across different studies (Chadee and Ditton, 2003). For example, Sundeen and Mathieu (1976) defined elderly as 52 years or above, whereas Warr (1984) suggested 66 years and over. Yet the most common definition of old is aged 65 or above. Since there has been no agreement on the definition of what constitutes old, mixed results were found on age. Some researchers argued that older race report higher level of fear than young tidy sum (e.g. On and Kim, 2009). In contrast, others suggested that elderly people are less possible to be victimized and thus they have the lowest level of fear (e.g. LaGrange and Ferraro, 1989 Chadee and Ditton, 2003). On and Kim (2009) explained that older people (aged 65 and over) often experience a unlade in social networks (e.g. withdrawal from work, loss of close family members, increasing physical and psychological fragility), and their social isolation or feeling of loneliness intensifies fear of crime. Recently, it has been proposed that the relationship in the midst of fear of crime and age is non-linear and varies with crime persona (Moore and Shephred, 2007). Past research has shown two different inverted U-shaped patterns in fear of property loss and fear of personal injury. Fear of property crime peaked at some time during middle-age, whereas fear of personal harm decreased with age (Chadee and Ditton, 2003 Moore and shepherd, 2007). The oldest age group (75 or above) exhibited the lowest levels of fear for two property c rime and personal crime (Chadee and Ditton, 2003). Prior research has shown that gender and age often interact with one another in producing the fear of crime differences (Ortega and Myles, 1987 Haynie, 1998 Pain, 2001). Significant gender differences in fear are observed among younger people. Nonetheless, this gender-fear gap has narrowed as mens reported fear of crime has gradually increased over time while womens has remained still (Haynie, 1998).Attitude towards prisoner and crime and life satisfactionMuch research on fear of crime has been focused on the perceived stake of crime little is known about how peoples attitude towards prisoners and quality of life link to their fear of crime. Informal social control, trust, and social cohesion are important factors that contributed to the feelings of security hence, one might argue that fear of crime often reflects individuals life satisfaction and their perceptions of social control. Jackson (2006) puts forward the deliberate tha t public attitudes toward crime raise fundamental sociological problems but with a twist public perceptions of deviance, social rear and social control (p.253) and he claimed that public perceptions of crime reveal how people conceive social order (including the norms, values, and morals that bind communities and constitute social glue) and what they see as opposing to that social (maybe specific groups or wider social changes regarding values and morals, ethnicity diversity, and transformations in the governmental and economic arenas) (p.261). on that pointfore, it has been suggested that high levels of community efficacy, social cohesion, and a tight social structure (with low levels of anonymity and distrust) might inhibit fear of crime (Farrall, Gray and Jackson, 2007).In the last decades, researchers have questioned the validity of previous studies on fear of crime. LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) criticized that the experimental designs of previous studies were problematic. Fi rst, it has been suggested that measures of crime risk are often mistaken for measures of crime fear. Second, several widely used crime survey do not measure fear of crime, in which implicit questions are used in crime survey to measure fear (e.g. how safe(p) do you feel or would you feel organismness out alone in your neighborhood at night?) instead of explicit questions. Hence, LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) have developed an 11-itemed crime fear survey to overcome the above shortcomings. The current study aims to use LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) crime fear questionnaires to examine gender and age effects on fear of crime in a Chinese sample.MethodSampleA resume of 170 participants (77 males, 92 effeminates and 1 without specifying gender) were recruited in this study. The sample consisted of two undergraduates and postgraduates. Participants aged from 18 to 48 year-old (M = 21.94 SD = 4.07). descriptive statistics of the sample were flummoxed in table 1.They joined this study on a voluntary basis.InstrumentAttitudes towards Prisoners Scale (Melvin, Gramling, Gardner, 1985) This scale contains 36 items. Participants were asked to rate on a 5-point Likert Scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The scale had a satisfactory dependability level, with boilers suit alpha = .91.Life Satisfaction Scale. Life Satisfaction Scale, a five-item-scale developed by Diener and his associates measured general satisfaction towards life (Diener et al., 1985 Larsen, Diener, Emmons, 1985 Pavot Diener, 1993). It was formalize locally (Wang, Yuen, Slaney, 2009). Participants were asked to rate the items on a 7-point Likert Scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The overall alpha is satisfactory at .88.Fear of Crime Scale (Ferraro, 1996) The ten items of this scale were rated on a 10-point Likert scale, raning from 1 (not afraid at all ) to 10 (very afraid).Unlike the Attitude towards Prisoners Scale, the Fear of Crime S cale had not been validated locally, thus prior to any analysis, a set of constitution procedures was performed.First, two items that could not match the current research purpose were withdraw while the item being raped or sexually assaulted was distant due to its gender nonequivalence, the item having your car stolen was also removed because not many college students in Hong Kong owned their own cars.After removing the two items, the Kasier-Meyer-Oklin (KMO) and the Bartletts shield of Sphericity were performed to see if the originally factor structure could be utilise in this study. The KMO value of the eight items was 0.80 and the Bartletts Test of Sphericity was significant (p ResultsChecking for Covariates found on previous studies, life satisfaction, religion, and living arrangement are all possible covariates. In order to be classified as a covariate, these variables should correlate with a) any of the independent variables (age and gender) and b) any of the dependent va riables ( replete(p) fear of crime, fear of physical harm and fear of being cheated). Preliminary analyses indicated none of these variables fulfill the above conditions, so they would be excluded in subsequent analysis.Testing of guessPrior to analysis, all variables excluding gender were mean-centred. This was done to reduce any multicollinearity and to facilitate model estimation when main effects and interactive effects were both present (Aiken West, 1991).To compare the relative influences of age and gender on inwardness fear of crime, fear of physical harm and fear of being cheated, trine sets of hierarchical regression were performed. Attitude towards prisoners was get-go entered into the equation as a covariate, followed by age and gender the Age X Gender interaction term was entered afterwards.Gender Difference in Fear of Crime There was a main effect that gender had on all terzetto types of crime fear, where female was always significantly more fearful than male (se e Table 2). See table 3 for the mean and standard recreation of the three dependent variables in each gender group.Age Effect on Fear of Crime While age autocraticly jibe with fear of being cheated, no significant correlational statistics was found between age and the other fear of crime constructs (see Table 4). Yet after controlling for attitude towards prisoner as the covariate, the predictive power of age on fear of being cheated disappeared (see Table 2).Age X Gender Interaction Effect on Fear of Crime Significant Age X Gender interaction effects on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated were found. However, such interaction effect did not happen for fear of physical harm (see Table 2).To further investigate these significant interaction effects, two sets of hierarchical regression on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated were performed after splitting the sample into male and female subgroups. Attitude towards prisoners was first entered into the equation as a covariate, followed by age.After controlling for the covariate, age was no longer a predictor of total fear of crime for both gender groups. Yet for fear of being cheated, while it could be predicted by age for female ( = .14, pDiscussionThe present study aimed to look at age and gender effects on fear of crime and their relationships with attitude towards prisoner and crime, life satisfaction, living arrangement and religion in a Chinese sample. In general, women reported higher average scores on fear than men among all aspects of crime, indicating that women were always more afraid of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured. Women in our sample also reported that they were most afraid of being raped or sexually assaulted, followed by fear of being murder and fear of being attacked by person with a weapon. This pattern of results were in line with previous findings that women were more fearful than men because they were particularly vulnerable to crime and w ere less able than men to defend themselves physically therefore, women perceived themselves to be at greater risk of crimes than men (LaGrange and Ferraro, 1989 Smith and Torstensson, 1997). The results were also consistent with previous studies that fear of sexual assault operated as a master offense among women, which in loose heightened their fear of other victimizations, e.g. murder, attacks, or burglary (Ferraro, 1995). On the other hand, fear of being murder was most common among males, followed by fear of being attacked by someone with a weapon and fear of being raped or sexually assaulted. Interestingly, the current results replicated the findings of LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) in which men reported that they were afraid of being sexually assaulted (presumably by other men).In the second part of the study, a factor analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between gender and age of participants and their various crime perceptions. Results of the present study showed a gender effect on fear of crime, in which women had significantly higher score on total fear of crime, fear of being cheated and fear of physical harm than men. These findings were consistent with previous research in which females might have displace threshold for fear than males. An evolutionary approach has been put forward by researchers to explain this gender difference in fear of crime (e.g. Campbell, Muncer and Bibel, 2001 Fetchenhauer and Buunk, 2005 Sidebottom and Tilley, 2008). In a Dutch study, Fetchenhauer and Buunk (2005) showed that females were significantly more fearful than males when presented with scenarios (both criminal and non-criminal events) that resulted in physical injury, and they proposed that gender differences in fear of all kinds of events that involved physical injury may be the result of sexual selection that favoured risk-taking and post fights among males, and being cautious and protecting ones offspring among females (p.111).The current study also found a significant positive correlation between age and fear of being cheated, suggesting that older people were more afraid of being cheated than younger people. The result reflects the varying importance attached to material riches with age the costs of property loss might have greater impact on middle-aged group since they are more likely to have accumulated property and have dependent children compared to younger age group (Moore and Shepherd, 2007). Based on data derived from the 2001 British Crime Survey, Moore and Shepherd (2007) concluded that fear of property loss was greatest at round 40-60 years, peaked at around 45 years, whereas a lower level of fear was observed at about 16-25 years. Another possibility for the age differences in fear might be due to socialization. Past research has shown that socialization may increase the amount of contacts with others, and thus people who interact more often may increase their likelihood of fraud victimization (Van Wy k and Manson, 2001). In a recent study, Schoepfer and Piquero (2009) demonstrated that risky behaviour and age were important factors that predicted the likelihood of fraud victimization individuals who were open to financial risk-taking and assiduous in more risky behaviours were more likely to be a victim of fraud (e.g. free prize fraud, credit or banking company account fraud and being billed for more than what the product is worth). It should also be noted that older people in our sample are postgraduate students who might have higher income and socialize more often and thus they have greater opportunities to be victimized than younger people. Results in this study also showed that the relationship between age and fear of being cheated was influenced by individuals attitude towards prisoner. Since not much research has been done on fear of being cheated, more studies are needed to look at the relationship between age and fear of deception. Nonetheless, no significant correlati on was found between age and fear of physical harm, indicating that that age was not associated with levels of fear of being physical harm.Further analysis was performed in the succeeding(a) section to look at gender and age effects on various constructs of fear. Significant gender-age interaction effects were found on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated. After controlling the variable attitude towards prisoner, age was a significant predictor of fear of being cheated in females, but not in males. There was a positive correlation between age and fear of being cheated among females, suggesting that older females were more fearful of being victimized than males. This may be due in part to the fact that personal victimization can have more serious consequences for women than men. Past research has indicated that crime fear involve both emotional and evaluative components and it is shaped by the vividness of the image of crime and perceptions of the severity of the consequenc es of crimes, together with feelings of personal control and perceptions of victimization likelihood (Jackson, 2006). It has been found that some victims of fraud may experience more harmful long-term effects than those victimized by conventional crimes, and many of them continued to yearn from lasting problems with finances, self-esteem, embarrassment, and self-blaming even ten years after the incidents (Shover, Fox and Mills, 1994). Recently, Schoepfer and Piquero (2009, p.210) argued that some fraud victimizations have even been equated to those of rape since both crime are rarely reported by victims and both involved victim facilitation, and questions of fault and responsibility are the burden of the victims hence, this makes females more fearful of being cheated than males. However, the current results did not support some of the past findings on fear of fraud victimization. Mixed results were found in previous studies concerning gender difference on fear of property loss. F or instance, LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) found no gender different on fear of being conned or swindled out of money and fear of being approach by a beggar whereas Moore and Shepherd (2007) showed that men were more fearful than women of property loss. One of the possibilities for the discrepancy in these findings might be due to the pagan difference in crime rates. Since fear of crime also reflects actual crime rate in society, results in the present study might also suggest that older women are more vulnerable to minor crimes, e.g. street or telephone deception, than men in the local area. Yet, no interaction effect on fear of physical harm was found in this study. Additional study might be needed to investigate how womens fear of being cheated varies with age.There are two possible limitations in the current study that should be taken into account. The first one relates to variables that were not included in the questionnaire, namely the mass media effect, crime prevalence and pr evious victimization experience. Due to the limitations of the standard questionnaire used in the present study, these factors were not included. It is well-established that the mass media plays an important role in cause individuals attitude towards prisoner and the perception of crime and fear. According to the Social working out of Risk Framework (SARF), people may attend to information about criminal activities from a series of amplified stations (e.g. mass media and interpersonal communication), and the risk signals may interact with a wide range of psychological, social and cultural processes in ways that intensity their actual risks (Kasperson et al. 2003). Researchers have demonstrated that tabloid readers who have an extensive level of crime media exposure are about twice more likely to be worried than those who have hold exposure to crime source (Smolej and Kivivuori, 2006). Previous literature on media using up and public attitude toward crime has also shown that off enders are often portrayed as different from the general population and viewed as psychopaths that prey on weak and vulnerable victims (Dowler, 2003). Recently, Reiner (2008) argued that crime stories often exaggerate the crime risks go about by higher-status people and always disproportionately representing women, children, or older people as victims, and this might heighten publics fear of crime.Over the past decade, researchers have attempted to integrate fear of crime into macro and micro levels of analysis (Ferraro, 1995 Jackson, 2004). At the macro-level, publics fear of crime is related to crime prevalence in society and local communities whereas, at the micro-level, neighbourhood characteristics and personal characteristics (e.g. previous victimization experience, anxiety and everyday worry) may interact to produce differential perception of risk which, in turn, produces either fearful or adaptive reactions to crime (or both) (Farrall, Gray and Jackson, 2007). In future re search it might be evoke to examine how these factors interact with age and gender to produce different levels of fear of being cheated. The second possible limitation is that the current findings could not be generalized into diverse cultures with different age groups. In this study, subjects were undergraduates or postgraduates recruited from a local university and they might have similar age, background, living situation, and ethnicity therefore, their crime experience will be alike. In the future study, participants from various age groups and cultures are needed in order to generalize the results outside the Chinese society.