Perceptions of safety and victimization: does survey construction affect perceptions?

Abstract

Surveys are commonly used in the field of criminology and criminal justice; however, the effects of survey design on study findings are rarely examined. Using a randomized experiment, this study examined the effects of question order in a victimization survey on respondents' perceptions of safety. The interactions between respondents' characteristics and question-order effects were also explored. The simple question-order effect was not found for the overall sample, but further examination revealed that respondent characteristics such as sex and victim status interact with the arrangement of questions. The implications of the findings for victimization survey research, and more generally for studies using surveys as a primary tool, are discussed.

Question Order Effects in Sustainable Behavior Norm Measurement: Gender Differences

“…There are many circumstances under which unwanted and hard to predict question effects can occur (Holbrook, Krosnick, Moore, & Tourangeau, 2007;Yang & Wyckoff, 2010;Lasorsa, 2003). It is known that question order (Ramirez & Straus, 2006;Schwarz & Hippler, 1995;Siminski, 2006), visual presentation (Christian & Dillman, 2004), structure, length, word familiarity (Blair, Sudman, Bradburn, & Stocking, 1977), and response order (Chan, 1991;McDermott & Frankovic, 2003) can have an impact on respondents' answers.…”

“…The present study is concerned with the type of order effects that are induced by the relative position of an item in a questionnaire and the context of the previous questions (Ramirez & Straus, 2006;Siminski, 2006). These types of order effects can easily distort and thus invalidate the obtained data (Yang & Wyckoff, 2010). Therefore, for researchers striving for objectivity, question order effects become an important factor in their research and the research of others.…”

“…Question order effects occur when a respondent reacts to a question while having been primed with previous questions (Yang & Wyckoff, 2010;Lasorsa, 2003;Schröder & Thagard, 2013;Van De Walle & Van Ryzin, 2011). Responding to a question involves remembering and making judgments (Yang & Wyckoff, 2010).…”

“…Responding to a question involves remembering and making judgments (Yang & Wyckoff, 2010). However, in answering the further questions this process can be shortened if some thoughts and judgments are already salient and ready to be used from the answers to the preceding questions (Yang & Wyckoff, 2010;Van De Walle & Van Ryzin, 2011).…”

“…Even less attention is paid to gender differences in question order effects, even though there are some data to suggest that in some cases males might be less affected by question order effects and to these gender differences might be related to the topics of the questions (Yang & Wyckoff, 2010;Kalton, Collins, & Brook, 1978). For example, the topics that are of greater importance to females and that elicit a more emotional reaction from them may induce question order effects (Yang & Wyckoff, 2010).…”