Fear of Crime & its effects in a Community

Introduction
The fear of crime creates negative psychological effects in a community. Consequently, stakeholders in the crime prevention sector need to equip themselves with knowledge surrounding this topic. They need to know factors linked to the fear of crime and the magnitude or relative importance of each. But this will only examine two factors; gender and prior victimization is really important in crime prevention strategies. Rational for the research is to answer the question does fear of crime create negative psychological effects in a community. The research question will require validation of two major factors then it will eventually necessity linking those factors together. At this point, there will be a need to move from theory to operationalization of the concept. It’s been established that there is a link between gender and fear of crime but the link is not clearly understood. Additionally, it has been assumed that prior victimization is related to fear of crime but the extent of this relationship needs to be established, Gender, fear of crime and prior victimization .(Babbie,2005)
It should be noted that various methods of asking one question are possible and each approach would result in totally different responses thus different analyses and results. This research questions may be asked in such way that they give open ended responses. For instance, the respondents may be asked what their fear of crime is in relation to their community. Then responses will be evaluated on the basis of gender. This is called the nominal approach. On the other hand, one can evaluate level of crime by asking respondents to answer yes or no with if their fear of crime of a high or low degree respectively. This is what is called the ordinal level of setting research questions. (Meyers et al, 2005)
Literature Review