APPENDIX B
Victimisation surveys in European countries, based on the database of the UNECE-UNODC query on victim surveys
1. Introduction
The purpose of this part of the report is to provide background information for developing victimisation surveys in Europe. The information reported here comes from a questionnaire, which was sent by UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) and UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) to countries in the UNECE region. The intention in this report is to study what kind of crime victimisation surveys the EU Member States (and candidate countries and some other UNECE member counties) have conducted in the last ten years. The countries were also asked whether they have plans to collect new crime victimisation data.
A statistical database of the survey has been compiled by the UNECE. It contains all the information of the results of the UNECE-UNODC Task Force on Victim Surveys. Our intention here is to focus on the general possibilities of the countries to conduct different kinds of victimisation surveys.
The questionnaire was sent to 33 European countries[1]. Of these, 25 replied. The countries were: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Seven countries did not answer: Austria, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia and Spain. Cyprus had not done and had no plans to do any victimisation surveys. So Cyprus was excluded from UNECE-UNODC dataset. Thus one quarter of the countries did not respond. No non-response work was done by UNECE or HEUNI.
This report begins with a short description of the ICVS (International Crime Victimisation Survey), because it has been completed in all Member States except Cyprus (although only eight countries reported of the ICVS in their country). Second, we describe what kind of victim surveys the countries have conducted, and what their future plans in this respect are. Then, we give a short overview of the contents and the methodology of the surveys. Last, we describe studies of four countries in more detail.
2. International crime victimisation survey (ICVS)
The International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) is a standardised sample survey that describes household members’ experiences of different crimes. The ICVS has been carried out at least once in all EU Member States during 1989-2005. The ICVS has been conducted five times, and the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland have participated in all five ICVS sweeps. These countries have both acquired knowledge of the ICVS and experience of large national victimisation surveys.
On the other hand Greece and Luxemburg have participated only once. It is likely that Greece and Luxembourg did not gain much cumulative knowledge of the 2005 sweep, either, in particular because this most recent sweep was carried out without local participation.
Table 1. ICVS in the old EU Member States in different years. [2]
AUSTRIA / 1 / 1 / 2
BELGIUM / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 4
DENMARK / 1 / 1 / 2
FINLAND / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 5
FRANCE / 1 / 1 / 2
GERMANY / 1 / 1 / 2
GREECE / 1 / 1
ITALY / 1 / 1 / 2
IRELAND / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 4
LUXEMBOURG / 1 / 1
THE NETHERLANDS / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 5
PORTUGAL / 1 / 1 / 2
SPAIN (CATALONIA) / 1 / 1 / 1 / 3
SWEDEN / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 4
UNITED KINGDOM / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 5
Total / 8 / 6 / 5 / 9 / 15 / 43
The fieldwork of the surveys during 1989-2000 was completed in most countries by an international market organization group (Interview-NSS). In Finland the 1992-2000 sweeps were completed by Statistics Finland. In Catalonia (2000) a national interview organization was used. These surveys were completed in each participating country in co-operation with national experts in criminology, who also contributed to the financing of the survey. This means that at least some researchers in each country were acquainted with the ICVS. In 2005, a consortium chaired by Gallup International, organised the field work; the fieldwork was not completed in most countries in close co-operation with national experts. This means that no scientific cumulative knowledge emerged of the survey content, analysis and use of the results in the respective countries.
The situation in the new EU Member States and candidate countries is less unique compared to the old 15 Member States, and only Poland, Hungary, Estonia and Turkey participated in the 2005 sweep. In the new Member States city-sampling has been common procedure probably because of undeveloped sampling frames.
Table 2. The ICVS in the new EU Member States and in the candidate countries in 1989-2005.
10 New Member States / 1989 / 1992 / 1996 / 2000 / 2005 / TotalCYPRUS / -
CZECH REPUBLIC / N / M+R / C / 3
ESTONIA / R / M+R / C / M+R / 4
HUNGARY / C / C / M+R / 3
LATVIA / M+R(95) / M(98) / 2
LITHUANIA / M+R / C / 2
MALTA / C / 1
POLAND / C / N / N / N / M+R / 5
SLOVAKIA / N / C / 2
SLOVENIA / C / R / C / 3
Total / 1 / 5 / 9 / 7 / 3 / 25
New Member States from 1.1.2007
BULGARIA / C / C
ROMANIA / R / C
Candidates
CROATIA / C / C
TURKEY
C = city / R = rural sample included
M = multiple cities / N = from a national survey
In the questionnaire, victimisation is asked for the last five years, which probably yield an underestimate of the incidents. On the other hand, a severe problem in the ICVS is the small sample size (the goal has been approximately 2000 interviews/country). Victimisation to specific crimes is usually rare, and therefore the number of victims in national samples is very small and prone to heavy random variation.
Because the ICVS has been conducted in all Member States (except in Cyprus), it is despite of its defects the most important survey for international comparisons, and if time series in history are required, comparability to the ICVS results is essential.
3. Victimisations surveys during the last 10 years and future plans
Because the aim of our project is to develop guidelines for a general victimisation survey, violence against women surveys are excluded from the analysis. Many countries have conducted violence against women surveys. The main idea in violence against women surveys is to measure violence especially in partner relationships, which often has not succeeded sufficiently well in general victimisation surveys, including the ICVS. One solution could be to add a separate violence against women section to a general victimisation survey (like in the British Crime Survey), another could be to change the general victimisation survey in the direction of the violence against women surveys. To include the violence against women survey approach in general victimisation surveys would require improvements in the fieldwork and questionnaire design. The fieldwork implementation would require interviewer training taking into account the sensitive issues of the survey for both sexes. The screening questions should be more concrete with illustrative examples of different everyday victimisation situations.
Of violence against women a separate UNECE survey was launched. The results of this study are not reported here.
The countries were asked, what kind of household surveys they have conducted to collect data on crime in the last ten years and do they have plans to conduct new surveys, and if they do, what kind of surveys.
Table 3. The survey types different countries have conducted and planned.
Survey type / Completed / Plannedsurveys / surveys
1. Ad hoc victimisation survey / 11 / 4
2. Periodic victimisation survey / 15 / 14
3. Continuous victimisation survey / 4 / 4
4. Multipurpose survey / 16 / 8
5. Other / 3 / 1
The five row variables in Table 3 describe the survey type. A multipurpose survey was the most common type. A multipurpose survey means that the victimisation section is only part of the survey. Statistical offices often conduct multipurpose surveys into which a short set of victimisation question is included, e.g. living conditions surveys, health surveys or general household surveys. E.g. living condition surveys may contain a safety section in which questions of victimisation, fear and precautionary measures are asked. Although this allows a wide description of the connection between victimisation and fear, and other areas of living conditions, the contents of the victimisation question set is often too narrow to allow a reliable and detailed analysis of victimisation.
Multipurpose surveys with victimisation questions have been completed in sixteen countries: Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine.
In Finland, the multipurpose survey was a victimisation survey in the sense that it consisted of two main parts: victimisation to accidents and victimisation to violence and property crimes (including fear of violence). The idea of combining accidents and violence under the concept physical safety comes from an OECD recommendation (1982). From a criminological perspective accidents and crimes are different phenomena, and also the damage to the victim is difficult to compare although the consequences of accidents and violence are directed in a similar way to the health care sector. A large question section on accidents also consumes lot of space otherwise available for victimisation topics.
Periodic victimisation surveys and ad hoc victimisation surveys are also common. Periodic victimisation surveys are surveys which are repeated at given intervals. An ad hoc victimisation survey is a survey, which has been tailored for a specific purpose and has not exactly specified future plans.
Continuous victimisation survey means that the data is gathered throughout the year, e.g. a sub-sample of the population is studied every month. The British Crime Survey is an example of a continuous survey.
The classification between periodic, continuous and ad hoc victimisation surveys are in certain ways connected with time (and exclusive), while a multipurpose survey means a certain structure of chosen topics in the study. Thus a multipurpose survey can be continuous, periodic or an ad hoc survey, i.e. the different alternatives of the variable do not exclude each other, and therefore one country respondent may have chosen two alternatives for one survey. Also the distinction between periodic and ad hoc survey can be difficult to make, but can in many cases be made afterwards of the history of the survey.
Periodic victimisation surveys have been completed in fifteen countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Switzerland.
Ad hoc victimisation surveys have been completed in eleven countries: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Norway, (Portugal, in 1994), the Republic of Moldova and Turkey.
Continuous victimisation surveys have not been common during past ten years. These kinds of surveys have been completed in Denmark (in 2005-2006 all months), the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom according to the UNECE-UNODC results.
The countries were also requested whether they had plans to conduct new household surveys to collect data on crime. France, Germany, Norway and Switzerland planned to do ad hoc victimisation surveys. New may here mean a completely new survey or a new or upgraded version of an old survey.
Fourteen countries had plans to conduct periodic victimisation surveys. These countries were Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland and Turkey.
Four countries reported that they have plans to do continuous victimisation surveys. Those countries were Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany and Hungary.
Multipurpose surveys with the inclusion of a module on victimisation have been planned in the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Ukraine.
Belgium, Portugal and the Republic of Moldova did not report any plans for new victimisation surveys. Estonia, France, and the United Kingdom did not respond to this question at all; although the question of future plans included an alternative “No plans for new surveys to collect data on crime”.
Norway is planning surveys in the category “other”, which was a survey on violence against children and adolescents. Adolescents are an important target group, because the minimum age in the general victimisation surveys is often 15-16 years. The surveys directed to children are however excluded from our research plan.
Table 4. Completed and planned surveys in different European countries according to the UNECE-UNODC results.
Ad hoc / Periodic / Continuous / Multipurpose / Ad hoc / Periodic / Continuous / Multipurpose
15 old Member States
(AUSTRIA)
BELGIUM / x / x
DENMARK / x / x / x
FINLAND / x / x / x / x / x
FRANCE / x / x / x / x / x
GERMANY / x / x / x / x / x / x
(GREECE)
IRELAND / x / x
ITALY / x / x
(LUXEMBOURG)
NETHERLANDS / x / x / x / x / x
PORTUGAL / (x 1994)
(SPAIN)
SWEDEN / x / x
UNITED KINGDOM / x
10 new Member States
(CYPRUS)
CZECH REPUBLIC / x / x / x
ESTONIA / x / x / x
HUNGARY / x / x / x
(LATVIA)
LITHUANIA / x / x / x / x / x
(MALTA)
POLAND / x / x
(SLOVAKIA)
SLOVENIA / x / x
New Member States from 1.1.2007
BULGARIA / x / x / x
ROMANIA / x / x / x
Candidate countries
CROATIA
TURKEY / x / x
EFTA countries
ICELAND / x / x
NORWAY / x / x / x / x / x / x
SWITZERLAND / x / x / x / x / x
Others
REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA / x
UKRAINE / x / x
Austria, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia, Spain, and Cyprus did not answer/had not victimisation surveys.
4. Detailed responses of the surveys