Subgroup 5: “Other parts of the manual”
SUBGROUP: ADD:
à Describe weighting procedures and methodology
à Calculation of response quota; include certain criteria concerning non-response rate and a description how this rate influences the outcome
à Documentation of non-response
à Guidance to minimise non-response (e.g. Frequency of contacting attempts)
à Handling of missings (including in the calculation base or nor; especially when calculating victimisation prevalence)
à Handling of implausibility in the data
à Pre-test (What should be obligatory?)
à Guidance of quality assurance and content of the quality report (see regulation, Article 10)
à Guidance to document fieldwork procedure
à There are questions on the number of events in last 12 months, but if the number exceeds four, the actual figure remains undetermined. It would be good if we will get a concrete figure instead of "Five times or more". This would be useful in international comparisons, although not important in most types of crimes
Some topics and other ones are described in the frames.
II. SURVEY GUIDELINES
1. Ethics
Theimplementation of SASU has anumber of ethical implications, some of which are indicated below.
Dataconfidentiality
National authorities should establish and adhere to procedures ensuring tight security procedures for theelectronic storage of survey data. This is especially important as regards access to, and sharing of files in which there are micro datathat can be traced to individuals.
Interviewer methods
Standard procedures should exist to ensure ethical conduct on thepart of interviewers in relation to theconduct of fieldwork, disclosure of information, etc. Two issues are of particular importance for theSASU:
§ Interviewers should not disclose information pertaining to respondents, and should be made aware of theconsequences of doing so.
§ Interviewers should adhere closely to theinstructions they are given as to assuring respondents that their answers will be anonymous and treated confidentially.
Interviewers may have to deal with some difficult interviews, which might be stressful for them. Stressful interviews will not necessarily be confined to those in which sexual and other violent incidents are described by respondents; serious burglaries can also cause trauma. Thenational authorities should take responsibility for setting procedures in place to support interviewers. For instance:
§ There could be formal ‘debriefing’ session with interviewers after they have completed, say, 100 interviews.
§ Management support should be available to deal with especially difficult ‘one-off’ interviews, with interviewers being clear as how to access this support.
Attitude towards respondents
Interviewers (and those in charge of them) have aresponsibility towards respondents. Some of theprocedures which are particularly important for theSASU are that:
§ Respondents should not feel pressurised into taking part in thesurvey, but feel that have given ‘informed consent’. In practice, this can be difficult given thethin dividing line between interviewer behaviour which is needed to maintain response rates, and accepting refusals.
§ Respondents should be treated respectfully (however ‘awkward’ they might be).
§ To help respondents access further support and advice, interviewers should be given at least one contact telephone number to provide to respondents who seem to require some support. Countries will need to choose from themost appropriate agencies.
It might be considered whether respondents, at theend of theinterview, should be offered theopportunity of receiving asummary of results from theSASU. This is away of acknowledging their contribution, and thanking them for it. It may also improve aparticipant’s future response to requests to be surveyed.
2. Age limits
Thesurvey covers persons aged 16 and over. There is no upper age limit. In fact, thevictimisation of theelderly seems important to consider – even if only to show that risks are generally low.
Thesample could be taken either from anational registry of persons, or from arandom sample of households from which one member aged 16 or more is randomly selected. Themethod used for selecting an individual from aselected household is left to thenational authorities according to their usual practice.
SUBGROUP:
à What about elderly people who live in rest homes? Can they also participate? And what about example the baker, is he an establishment or an individual from a household? Can he participate?
3. Interview training
Professionally trained and experienced interviewers should be used. They also need to be specifically trained about thenature of thesurvey.
SUBGROUP:
à What’s professionally? Is 2 hours training for a newcomer enough? Is 1 interview = experienced?
à It’s important that the interviewer talks perfectly the language from the country, other whiles people can be distrust.
All elements of standard training should be maintained as regards conducting interviews efficiently, accurately, and with due regard to therespondent. But elements of training will need to focus on theSASU specifically – particularly with regard to questions on sexual and other violence victimisation and theconditions under which questions are asked about this.
Active training for theSASU might also be useful including role-playings, simulations, and group discussions.
SUBGROUP:
ADD: Every question has to be discussed so they really understand the content and possible reactions/questions and answers.
Interviewers need to be able to access support in theevent of stressful interviews. Adebriefing exercise would be useful after aset number of interviews have been completed.
SUBGROUP:
à Debriefing is very important in the beginning so things still can be changed. Best after 1 or 2 weeks fieldwork.
Respondents must not feel overly pressurised into agreeing to an interview, should be treated respectfully and have every confidence that theinformation they give will be anonymous and confidential. Procedures should be in place so that respondents can be referred onto asupport agency if this seems appropriate.
To help respondents to access further support and advice, interviewers should be given at least one contact telephone number to give to respondents who may require some support.
Much of what should be routine initial and refresher training will apply to theSASU. At aminimum, this should include procedures with regard, for instance, to:
· Encouraging respondents to take part, without being overly forceful. This is theprocess of ensuring ‘informed consent’.
SUBGROUP:
à A manual with argumentations can be helpful, because also the meaning of more difficult reachable persons is important. In annex there is an example added.
· Being able – in CATI and CAPI interviews – to ‘manipulate’ keyboards accurately, without causing delay in questionnaire administration.
· Following questionnaire instructions accurately and quickly, without making up their own rules.
· Being able to query beforehand any interviewer instructions about which interviewers are unsure.
· Steering respondents through thequestionnaire in apatient way (especially when respondents challenge ‘why is that question being asked’).
SUBGROUP: ADD:
· NO suggestive answers
· Thanking respondents – in agenuine tone – for taking part.
In relation to theSASU, elements of training that will need to be focussed on include:
· How to select eligible respondents from within acorrectly understood household unit.
· Allaying fears about theconfidentiality of responses.
· Appreciating theneed for questions about sexual incident and assaults / threats to be answered in a‘private’ conversation with theinterviewer, thus ensuring that therespondent is in aposition to answer questions without hindrance or heightened risk. This will ensure more honest answers. It will also forestall possible domestic trouble. In face-to-face surveys, it is easier, to protect, therespondent’s privacy by ensuring that theinterview is conducted away from other household members. In telephone interviews, it is much more difficult to gauge the‘real life’ conditions under which arespondent is answering questions. This should be fully addressed in training. Theneed for rescheduling an interview if conditions are not right should be stressed, applying to both face-to-face and telephone interviews.
As theSASU is centrally concerned with victimisation experience, it will also be important for interviewers to need to know about theusual contours of this. Some key training items would be that:
§ Most people will engage well with thesubject of crime and victimisation.
§ TheSASU is not meant to cover every crime arespondent might have experienced.
§ Victimisation is not randomly distributed: some respondents will be victimised several times. This will make for some long interviews, whereas most will be fairly short.
§ It is vitally important to make sure that events are located accurately in time
§ Thescreeners questions are designed specifically simply to elicit ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, with other parts of thequestionnaire used for collecting details about what happened.
§ Respondents are to report only on their own experience of personal crime.
§ Very serious events are unlikely to be reported in interview often, although they could arise.
§ Less serious victimisations can soon be forgotten, but are relevant to thesurvey and need prompting for using theexact question wording.
However, active training for theSASU might be useful including role-playings, simulations, and group discussions. It would also be advisable to arrange group discussions after thefirst days of fieldwork to exchange experiences.
SUBGROUP:
What about:
On or two weeks before the fieldwork starts AN INTRODUCTION letter has to be sent. This is necessary to prepare the people for a phone call or an interviewer that will pass by for an interview. It increases the response rate. Also PAPI interviews have to be accompanied by a letter, explaining the survey.
NON RESPONSE People who don’t want to participate. How to keep data from them? Age, sex and maybe reason why they don’t want to participate? (Examples added in annex)
It’s important to follow up the interviewers, not only the supervisor of the investigation agency but also the countries.
Contact attempts: to reach one individual minimum 5 attempts have to be taken. Example: one time in the morning, one time in the evening, one time two days later.
Encipher.
A manual has to be made how to handle missing values, impossibilities in the data, quality rules.
4. Translation
Thenational authorities are responsible for producing anational questionnaire which makes it possible to provide theinformation specified in theRegulation. In doing so, they should take into account theinformation supplied in this manual, especially theList of Variables and, if wished, theModel Questionnaire.
Much of thedevelopment work on thesurvey was originally done in English, and specific problems may arise in using certain terms where usage differs between thenational language and English. As examples thefollowing may be cited:
o Theword for ‘stranger’ may in some languages be confused with ‘immigrant’).
o Terms used for different types of vehicles may differ so that it could be difficult to correspond exactly with theEnglish
o There may be problems in distinguishing between crime types such as ‘burglary’, ‘robbery’ and ‘theft’ in such away as to ensure equivalence between thelanguage versions
o Theword for ‘bribery’ is in some languages too serious for thetype of low level bribery which thequestion is meant to capture. More appropriate terms to use could be ‘backhander’, ‘un petit cadeau’, ‘pot-de-vin’, ‘smeergeld’ (Dutch), or ‘illegal commission’ (Southern Europe).
It is clearly not possible to make provision for all such questions of interpretation which may occur in different languages. Eurostat would be willing to be involved in discussing such issues and if necessary co-ordinating information between countries which share similar linguistic problems.
5. Legal act/s
References to theCouncil/Parliament Regulation and any others
ANNEX 1 SASU ANNEX: EXAMPLES OF IDEAS
(Proposed by Belgian Federal Police CGOP/B)
Rationale
• "I do not participate in the survey / Why should I?"
Your participation is very important. When making decisions, the authorities want take into account the views of different population groups that is both: older and younger, men than women, people with a positive or negative experience. We mainly want to get an idea of your feeling of security or insecurity among the XXXX population.
• "what will you do with my answers?"
We guarantee that your responses will be treated strictly confidentially. The answers of all who participate in the study will be collected in a single file. On this basis, we will calculate percentages and produce tables. It is therefore impossible for organizer of this survey to know who said what. The objective of this survey is preparing a map of the general phenomena of insecurity / security in order to obtain useful information to improve policy of security and police. The survey does not examine individual cases.
• "this kind of study does not interest me"
That's it, your answers are really important. This study will not reflect the views of all sections of the population if many different people will not be involved in it. It's important to know the views of including both: those interested in the subject and those not interested.
• "I know nothing"
That's your opinion interests us, no need for knowledge. In most cases, you can choose from a range of possible answers. The questions are simple and made it very clear. Even if the subject you are not familiar with there is always an opportunity to respond.
• "I'm too old to respond. Ask my husband"
Precisely, it is important that we have both the views of young and old, men and women. We really insist that you participate in this study.
• "I do not have time"
It will not take much time. The duration of the interview will depend on your answers and on your cooperation. I understand that this time is inappropriate and that you do not have much time for me but it is very important for us to know also the opinion of people who have a busy schedule. When can we contact you for an interview at a time that suits you best? Phrase well the question so that respondent does not have direct possibility of refusal. "When can we contact you for an interview?" but not "Can we contact you?".
• "How did you get to me?"
We drew a random sample of telephone numbers in the phone book. So it's acoincidence that we have contacted.
• "Why I should be interested in participating, what is the point for me?"
The purpose of this study is to assess the needs and wishes of the people in the subject of security and police.
Leaders can address these needs and wishes as they will be known.
• "Where can I get more information and how can I get proof of the authenticity of the study?"
A hotline where you can ask questions and expose its problems is available to the respondent. Do not hesitate to send them back to this issue:
- 0800 57 102 for Francophones
- 0800 57 101 for Dutch
• "the results will be published later?"