Crime And Fear Of Crime On Campus

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Crime and fear of crime on campus are major concerns for college students, parents, administrators, and policymakers. Students must feel comfortable living on or at least walking on campus. College populations may be more at risk of sexual assault than the general population because they are in the age group that experiences the most rape generally and because they participate in many dating and social activities. In addition, substance use of all kinds is common among college students and it increases risk of victimization by reducing the aptitude to battle unwanted situations. Yet the majority of college students are not victimized. Fear of crime can stem from many things, either the population size, neighborhood you are in, age, gender, and even your ethnicity. There is much curiosity that is growing with wanting to understand the level of fear on campuses at Universities all around the world. Questions such as what constitutes this fear or how safe is the university are essential.
Chockalingam and Murugesan (2009), conducted research to test the subsequent hypotheses: (1) fear of crime victimization is reliant on the country in one resides; (2) socio-demographic characteristics affect fear of crime victimization; (3) economic status affects fear of crime victimization; and (4) prior experience of victimization affects fear of crime victimization. Chockalingam and Murugesan additionally used a questionnaire. They collected from a total sample of 1,440 students: 725 of the pupils were from Chennai, India and 715 of the pupils were from Mito city in Japan. The collection instrument they used included overall 75 items with eight different parts with a majority of the questions being likert point responses (Chockalingam & Murug...

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...age, and others. All articles chose the same type of sample, with most stating the sample and the size could be limitations. Another limitation some studies had was only giving out questionnaires to students taking specific courses. Administering the questionnaires all over campus would be more appropriate so researchers can get a range of students. It can be assumed from these ten literature reviews that student’s fear of crime on campuses encompass a variety of issues such as gender, behaviors, substance use, security and safety tactics, age of students, and even the time of day students are on campus. More studies should be done concerning the not only the level of fear students have of being victimized, but what they and universities do to prevent victimization. Also possibly comparing different school in different locations can give some insight of the issue.

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