Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2021/22: Main Findings

Annex D: Changes to the survey for 2023/24

Introduction

The re-procurement of the SCJS contract in 2022 provided an opportunity to refresh the existing SCJS questionnaire. The goal of this was to ensure that the SCJS kept pace with the changing nature of crime, and continued to meet user needs. The questionnaire was amended in two key ways: firstly, new modules were introduced and amendments were made to existing questions and modules and, secondly, some existing questions and modules were either removed or rotated out of the survey.

The entire 2021/22 questionnaire has been reviewed as part of this work stream. However, development work around question amendments and additions has focused on cyber crime, partner abuse and violence against women and girls (VAWG). These areas were selected on the basis of user engagement carried out as part of the SCJS re-procurement. This user engagement began with a consultation which ran from September to December 2021, and was followed by a series of user workshops in January 2022. Both the consultation and user workshops gave users and stakeholders the opportunity to comment on the questionnaire and how it might be adapted to keep pace with the changing nature of crime.

The following sections provide more details on the ways in which the questionnaire has been adapted. This new questionnaire is currently out in field, with fieldwork expected to be completed in Spring 2024 and results published in 2025. Users will be kept informed as to when the first results will be published through the ScotStat network.

As discussed in Chapter 2, the Scottish Government re-introduced face-to-face fieldwork in April 2022. As such, the 2023/24 SCJS will be undertaken mostly via face-to-face interviews in the respondent’s home. Respondents will continue to be given the opportunity to take part in the survey remotely should that be required.

Development of a new fraud and computer misuse victim form

Since 2018/19, the SCJS has included questions on cyber fraud and computer misuse. These questions provided a first and important step in furthering our understanding of the nature of how these crimes are experienced in Scotland. As discussed in the Cyber crime chapter, these questions provided information on the kinds of cyber fraud and computer misuse experienced by respondents, what the impact was and whether it resulted in any changes in behaviour. However, as they stood, these questions were unable to provide an estimate of the prevalence of these crimes or the specific details on who experienced these crimes (unlike the findings presented in the violent and property crime chapters).

Following consultation with users in 2021, the SCJS team started extensive work to develop and test a new victim form focused on fraud and computer misuse. This new questionnaire was largely based on that included in the Crime Survey for England and Wales which was first introduced in 2015^[138]. This new victim form will allow, for the first time, the prevalence of these crimes to be estimated in Scotland. This new module will collect detailed information on each incident of fraud or computer misuse and will go through similar coding checks as the traditional victim form to ensure only valid incidents are included. The victim form includes detailed questions on the involvement of any cyber element within fraud and computer misuse incidents, and will provide a fuller picture of cyber crime in Scotland.

Development of a new partner abuse module

One aspect of the questionnaire development work stream has been producing a new and improved partner abuse module that sits within the self-completion part of the questionnaire. The key objective when developing this module has been to more effectively capture experiences of coercive control, including patterns of ongoing control and their impacts on victims. To achieve this, the SCJS has moved away from asking respondents about specific instances of physical and psychological abuse and instead asks respondents about their experiences of types, or themes, of abuse (e.g. financial, physical, sexual etc.) that broadly reflect the themes within the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. These changes do mean an end to the existing time series.

Due to the sensitive nature of these questions additional quality assurance steps were taken during the questionnaire development process. The proposed questions were shared with both internal and external stakeholders who were invited to share their expertise and provide feedback. Once the questions had been refined they were cognitively tested to assess the acceptability and understanding of the new questions. Cognitive interviews were conducted with 20 participants, the majority of these participants had experienced abusive behaviours from a partner or ex-partner. The questions were then amended in line with the feedback received during the cognitive interviews. The finalised questions, alongside the entire SCJS questionnaire, were then piloted with 102 participants prior to being rolled out in full.

Improvements made to questions relating to Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)

There are questions that relate to VAWG throughout the survey questionnaire, they are not contained in a single module. The changes made relate to questions on perceptions of crime, harassment, stalking, less serious sexual assault and more serious sexual assault. The changes aim to increase the types of crime respondents are able to report as well as the locations in which these occurred. Furthermore, some specific changes to the sexual assault modules – namely, removing the word ‘forced’ from sexual victimisation questions - ensures that the survey is in line with the current thinking and legislation.

As with the cyber crime victim form and the partner abuse module, the proposed changes were informed by discussions with Scottish Government policy colleagues as well as the feedback received from users via our consultation and user workshops. Survey users were given a further opportunity to comment on the proposed question changes before these were then piloted and, finally, rolled out.

Questions removed or rotated out of the survey

The SCJS interview length is currently at the upper limit of what we would consider a fair burden on participants, around 40 minutes long on average. While it is desirable to capture more information and continuously add questions to the survey, each question added to the survey increases the interview duration - particularly for those that have suffered repeat victimisation. Therefore, it is crucial that the current SCJS interview length is maintained. To achieve this, some existing questions have been removed to make space for new questions and some modules have become partial sample modules. Changes to the survey questionnaire are made annually and future decisions on what will and will not be included within the questionnaire will be based on user need. The infographic below details the changes made for the 2023/24 SCJS questionnaire:

Key to proposed changes

[1] Additions / amendments to questions

[2] Section moved to third sample modules

[3] Questions moved into Section 3: victim form

[4] Removed from the 2023/24 survey questionnaire