Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) is a social survey which asks people about their experiences and perceptions of crime in Scotland. The survey is an important resource for both the government and public of Scotland. Respondents are selected at random from the Postal Address File and participation in the survey is entirely voluntary. The main aims of the SCJS are to:provide reliable statistics on people's experience of crime in Scotland, including services provided to victims of crimeassess the varying risk of crime for different groups of people in the populationexamine trends in the level and nature of crime in Scotland over timecollect information about people's experiences of, and attitudes on a range of crime and justice related issuesAn important role of the SCJS is to provide an alternative and complementary measure of crime to police recorded crime statistics. For further details of the scope and methodology of the SCJS, please see documentation. Information about the survey and links to publications may be found on the Scottish Government's Scottish Crime and Justice Survey webpages. Background and history of the SCJSPrevious surveys of victimisation in Scotland began with the Scottish components of the 1982 and 1988 sweeps of the British Crime Survey (BCS) (held at the Archive under SNs 4368 and 4599) The Scottish element of the 1988 BCS was also known as the Scottish Areas Crime Survey and coverage was limited in those early surveys to the areas south of the Caledonian Canal. From 2012, the BCS has been renamed the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) (held under GN 33174). The first independent Scotland-only crime survey was commissioned by the Scottish Office in 1993 under the title of the Scottish Crime Survey (SCS) and was followed by repeated sweeps in 1996 (both years held together under SN 3813), and again in 2000 (SN 4542) and 2003 (SN 5756). In 2004 the survey underwent both a name change, to the Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey (SCVS) (SN 5757), and a major methodological change, with a move away from in-home face-to-face interviewing to telephone interviewing. However, the 2006 SCVS (SN 5784) returned to face-to-face interviewing after it was shown that the robustness of the data produced by the 2004 telephone survey could not be substantiated. From 2008-2009, the series name was changed to the present title, the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, and it moved to a repeated annual cross-sectional schedule based on financial year. From 2012-13 the SCJS moved from annual to biennial survey covering the financial year however, the 2014-15 survey was the last biennial survey and currently the SCJS is conducted on an annual basis. See the documentation for further details. Special Licence dataFrom 2012-13 only the Main Questionnaire data are available under standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement. The Victim Form and Self-Completion data are available under Special Licence (SL). The SL data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users of the SL version will need to complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables in order to get permission to use that version.
Main Topics:
The 'Main_ab' data file comprises the main questionnaire data (non-victim form). Respondents in the sample were randomly allocated to one of two sub-samples, A (MainA) and B (MainB). These groups were asked common core questions, including views on social issues, fear of crime, experience of victimisation since 1 January of the survey year, and demographics. Those in MainA were asked follow-up questions on: contact with and views of the police, and sentencing and the role of prisons. Those in MainB were asked follow-up questions on: fear of crime; home, personal and vehicle security measures; experience of harassment; violence at work; and views of respondent's locality. The main data file also contains incident counts for each type of crime, and prevalence flags indicating whether the respondent had experienced any incidents of each type of crime, along with the appropriate weighting variables to allow victimisation rates to be calculated and related to household and individual characteristics. The 'Short' data file comprises data from respondents who completed the short questionnaires: these were used at addresses that had been assigned to the short survey and comprised only the first eight questions of the main questionnaire. These respondents were then asked to complete the self-completion form. The 'Victim' data file includes details from the 'victim form'(s) of incidents of victimisation occurring in Scotland in the relevant survey year (i.e. 1 January-31 December 2003), financial and emotional costs of incident(s), contact with the police and other agencies in relation to the incident, evaluation of such involvement and assessment of desired punishment for offender. This version of the victim form information can be used to calculate victimisation and prevalence rates consistent with the rates calculable in the main data. The Victim file also contains a number of core demographic variables imported from the main data. The 'Adult' file contains data from the adult self-completion questionnaire, which covered respondents' experiences of drug use and domestic violence.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Face-to-face interview
Telephone interview
Self-completion
Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) and Computer Assisted Self Interview (CASI) are used for the main questionnaires/victim forms and self-completion questionnaires respectively.
