Fear of Crime in the United States: A Multivariate Analysis

Abstract

Fear of crime in the United States has become a problem as serious as crime itself. Many commentators have pointed out that fear is greatly out of proportion to the objective probability of being victimized. But to date, few multivariate analyses of fear of crime have been undertaken. The present research moves in this direction by combining and analyzing two national samples from 1973 and 1974 in regard to fear (n = 2,700). We employed five variables central to the victimization literature-sex, race, age, socioeconomic status, and community size. Multivariate Nominal Scale Analysis (MNA) was employed to assess the independent ability of each variable to predict respondents who indicated a fear of crime (42 %) and those who did not (58 %/6). Findings indicated that sex and city size are strong predictors of fear. Age and race were somewhat less important than has generally been supposed and the socioeconomic variables, income and education, had small effects. Merely on the basis of this system of explanatory variables, however, it was possible to classify correctly almost 72 percent of the entire sample in regard to fear. Implications of this high explanatory power as well as limitations of the analysis are presented and discussed.