Perceptions of disorder, risk and safety: The method and framing effects

Abstract

ResumenDe acuerdo con varios estudios, la evaluación de incivilidades físicas y sociales de los lugares forma parte del proceso mediante el cual la gente estima su nivel de seguridad. El estudio que aquí se presenta investiga si tal supuesto se mantiene cuando a la gente se le permite expresar lo que piensa de un lugar antes de evaluar el nivel de desorden físico y social del mismo. En primer lugar, los participantes debían escribir sus impresiones sobre tres vecindarios con distintos niveles de desorden, y después evaluar mediante un cuestionario que tan desordenados e inseguros les parecían. El análisis cualitativo mostró que aun cuando los participantes mencionaron el desorden físico del lugar, sólo algunos de ellos hicieron referencia a cuestiones de crimen e inseguridad. El análisis cuantitativo reveló que mientras mas desordenado se evaluaba un lugar mayor inseguridad se percibía. Las conclusiones sugieren que, por un lado, la percepción de desorden de un lugar no siempre evoca respuestas de inseguridad y, por el otro, que la relación encontrada entre desorden e inseguridad puede deberse al método de investigación utilizado.Palabras clave: Desorden, miedo al crimen, seguridad, percepción de riesgo, ambiente físico, ambientes residenciales. Perceptions of disorder, risk and safety: The method and framing effectsAbstract Several research studies have argued that people evaluate incivilities of places as part of the process of estimating how safe they might be. The study presented here examined whether such an assumption is upheld when people are allowed to express their thoughts about places before rating how disordered a place seems to them. British students evaluated three residential areas with different levels of disorder. First, participants had to write their impressions about the places and then rate how disordered, risky and unsafe the places seemed to them. The qualitative analysis showed that despite participants referred to physical disorder, only few participants mentioned crime and safety. Results from the quantitative analysis revealed that as the more disordered a place was rated the more unsafe it was considered. Findings suggest both that disordered places not always elicit unsafe concerns and that the so predicted relationship between disorder and safety maybe method dependant.

Road lighting and pedestrian reassurance after dark: A review

“…Transcription of the interviews and subsequent coding demanded significant effort from the experimenter. An alternative approach was used by Acun˜a-Rivera et al 18 in which test participants were asked to give five words or phrases that best expressed their impression of the place evaluated. This leads to fewer data but would allow for easier analysis.…”

“…otherwise have not chosen to evaluate or considered to be relevant. This can be seen in Acun˜a-Rivera et al 18 who used evaluations of digitally manipulated photographs of a residential road to investigate the effect of signs of incivility. Their qualitative method asked test participants to provide at least five words that best expressed their impression of the scene: while test participants referred to physical disorder, only a few mentioned crime and safety.…”

“…Thus, it is possible that directly asking questions about fear and safety raises a problem that is otherwise non-existent. 18…”

“…Measurement of reassurance, as with any perceptual attribute, is prone to bias; questionnaire design and the mode of evaluation can affect the outcome. [18][19][20] Hence, an experiment is reported that attempts to evaluate the contribution of lighting to reassurance without a specific focus on lighting. Following the conclusion that lighting matters, the second aim is to determine how this enhancement is effected by three key variables of lighting that the designer is able to manipulate -illuminance, spatial distribution and spectral power distribution (SPD) -a step toward establishing criteria for design guidance.…”

Perceived Lighting Uniformity on Pedestrian Roads: From an Architectural Perspective

“…Most previous studies were laboratory based [37]. In recent years, more studies have been conducted in complex environments [4,7,12,14,20,[58][59][60][61][62][63], and the number of studies based on qualitative methods is increasing [64][65][66][67][68].…”