ASSESSING AGE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEIVED RISK AND FEAR OF CRIME*

Abstract

Much of the research on fear of crime indicates that women and older persons are highly afraid of crime. These findings, especially older persons' fear of crime, are widely communicated in the scientific and popular media. This study examines age and gender differences in perceived risk and fear of crime. The data are from telephone interviews of 320 randomly selected residents in a southeastern metropolitan area of the United States. The relationships of age and gender to fear of crime are compared using a National Crime Survey (NCS) measure of fear of crime and 11 alternative indicators of fear of specific offenses. Women reported signifcantly greater perceived risk and fear of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured and older adults reported the greatest fear of crime when the NCS measure was used. but not when the alternative individual measures of fear of crime were used. A LISREL model with latent constructs for fear of personal crime and fear of property crime also indicates that older adults do not have higher levels of fear of crime. In short, the extent of fear in the everyday lives of most older persons has been overestimated in many previous studies because of measurement problems.