Feasibility of gathering momentary and daily assessments of fear of crime using a smartphone application (STUNDA): Methodological considerations and findings from a study among Swedish university students

Abstract

The introduction of experience research using smartphone applications has enabled researchers to explore previously uncharted territories within the social science landscape. The use of experience research methodologies may both avoid some of the biases associated with conventional survey methods and enable researchers to gather information on situational dimensions of different outcomes. While existing smartphone-based experience research is found in several scientific disciplines, one outcome that has rarely been studied using this approach is fear of crime. Although fear of crime here only serves as an example of an outcome that may benefit from being examined in situ, the main focus of this article is directed at assessing the feasibility of gathering momentary and daily assessments on fear of crime using an experience sampling research design. A sample of 191 university students participated in a non-incentivized research study by downloading the smartphone application STUNDA, completing a baseline survey and repeatedly answering signal-contingent surveys, event-contingent surveys, and daily assessments across a self-defined study period. The results indicate that it is feasible to conduct research on fear of crime using a smartphone application. However, variations in participation across groups indicate that the methodology is perhaps best suited to dedicated groups of participants with a special interest in the studied outcome. Methodological considerations and implications for future research are discussed.

Examining experiential fear of crime using STUNDA: Findings from a smartphone-based experience methods study

“…Owing to the exploratory nature of this article, a number of important limitations point to avenues for future research. First, the uneven number of surveys completed across participants is not randomly distributed (Kronkvist and Engström, 2020). Although such participation bias is common in this kind of research (Solymosi et al, 2020), future studies should attempt to minimize the imbalance in the data.…”

Exploring Situational Fear of Crime

“…The research project »STUNDA: Examining experiences of situational fear of crime through smartphone applications among young adults in Malmö« was launched as a first step towards an empirical examination of situational fear of crime. A smartphone application (STUNDA) was developed and distributed among a convenience sample of students in Malmö, Sweden (see Kronkvist & Engström, 2020). While the application includes a number of different surveys spanning different forms of fear of crime, the main tool for the purpose of specifically examining situational fear of crime takes the form of a signal-contingent survey.…”

“…Individual characteristics were measured in less detail, but had been collected at the time participants enrolled in the study, in the form of demographic characteristics and measures of general or expressive fear. In sum, almost 200 participants downloaded STUNDA to their smartphones and responded to almost 1,300 signal-contingent surveys that provided detailed information on different situations (for full details regarding the data collection, see Kronkvist & Engström, 2020).…”

“…On a methodological note, it should also be mentioned that the analyses conducted to date show that experiences of fear, as they occur in moments of everyday life, can be studied using a dedicated smartphone application (Kronkvist & Engström, 2020). It is thus possible to collect detailed situational data, which in turn offers possibilities to further analyse situational fear of crime.…”

“…First, fear of crime varies across different contexts in our daily lives, suggesting that fear appears to be a fairly dynamic phenomenon (Engström & Kronkvist, 2021). Second, it is both possible and feasible to employ alternative methodological approaches to study this dynamic form of fear of crime (Kronkvist & Engström, 2020).…”