Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey 2020: main findings

Footnotes

1. The survey was commissioned by the Scottish Government and produced by a collaboration between Ipsos MORI and ScotCen Social Research.

2. The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) is a large scale social survey on people's experiences and perceptions of crime, policing and the justice system in Scotland; based on around 5,500 face-to-face interviews with adults aged 16 and over in private households.

3. The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) has been suspended since the 17^th March 2020.

4. Survey data collected on experiences of victimisation can act as a complementary measure of crime in Scotland to police recorded crime statistics.

5. Further information on the interview reference period and the classification of incidents as in scope or out of scope is provided in the Technical Report.

6. A job defined by the government as critical for the response to the Coronavirus outbreak.

7. The response rate was calculated as the proportion of total number of completed interviews (2,654) out of the total number of issued addresses (6,777). Just under one-in-three respondents (30%) could not be contacted following eight or more calls, and around one-in-seven (14%) were contacted but did not wish to take part. Further information on the issued sample and response rates is provided in the Technical Report.

8. It is important to caveat that crime levels ordinarily show some seasonal variation, so this should be considered when looking at crime levels before and after the UK's first national lockdown on the 23^rd March.

9. Comparisons are not possible in relation to the crime statistics included in Chapter 2 of this report. For more information please refer to Chapter 4 and the Technical Report.

10. Further information on calculation of confidence intervals and significance testing is provided in the Technical Report.

11. Including individual incidents within a series incident – see the Technical Report.

12. For a small number of incidents, where only the annual quarter in which the incident occurred was available, it was not possible to explicitly determine as before or after the lockdown. In such cases, unless there was further contextual data, where the quarter the incident occurred was 1^st January – 31^st March the incident was classified as before the lockdown, and where the quarter was 1^st March – 31^st May it was classified as having occurred after the lockdown.

13. A victim is defined as a respondent who reported crimes or offences in the main questionnaire (excluding sexual offences and threats) that are within the scope of the survey, took place in Scotland, and occurred within the reference period. For more information please refer to the Technical Report.

14. Respondents who were not employed throughout the pandemic (including those who were retired) were not asked CVKEYWORK, explained as: "a job defined by the government as critical for the response to the Coronavirus outbreak". For more information please refer to the Technical Report.

15. Experimental Statistics are a sub-set of Official Statistics.

16. The period before the UK's first national lockdown is classified as the start of September 2019 up until the 23^rd March 2020; the period after the UK's first national lockdown started is classified as from the 23^rd March through to the end of September 2020.

17. Due to the small numbers of respondents who experienced violent crime, comparisons of the likelihood of experiencing violent crime between sub-groups are not included here.

18. For further information on comparable crimes see the Technical Report.

19. Only around half of SVTS respondents were asked to recall incidents of crime occurring in September 2019 and September 2020, depending on the month the interview was completed.

20. The comparable police recorded crime data for September 2019 to March 2020 was sourced from the annual Recorded Crime in Scotland National Statistics, while the data for September 2019 and April to September 2020 was sourced from the monthly Recorded Crime in Scotland Official Statistics. More information on these series can be found on the Scottish Government website. Note police recorded crime figures have been rounded to the nearest thousand throughout.

21. Due to the relatively smaller sample size of the SVTS compared to the SCJS, respondents who had been a victim of crime but not reported the incident to the police were not asked about their reasons for this. Information on why victims do not reported their experiences of crime to the police, whilst not comparable, is collected by the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey.

22. SVTS data was collected in September and October 2020, and thus captured incidents of crime which occurred between 1^st September 2019 and 30^th September 2020. TCSEW data was collected between May 2020 and November 2020, and thus captured incidents of crime which occurred between 1^st May 2019 and 31^st October 2020.

23. See the user guide to crime statistics for England and Wales.

24. Some variables which are asked in both the SVTS and TCSEW, including in relation to the perceived level of crime in the local area and across Scotland, and perceptions of the police, cannot be compared because the findings from the SVTS include "don't know" and "refused" responses which when combined account for more than 5% of responses.

25. CVWALKDARK (feelings of safety waking alone in local area after dark) has 3.4% responding don't know or refused, the remainder of the questions compared have less than 0.5% responding don't know or refused.

26. A clarification was included in the SVTS questionnaire script at the start of the feelings of safety section to ensure that respondents understood that 'feelings of safety' meant in general, and not just regarding COVID-19.

27. This finding is based on TCSEW data collected in August 2020.

28. This finding is based on TCSEW data collected in August 2020.

29. This finding is based on TCSEW data collected in August 2020.

30. Respondents who were not employed, including retired, throughout the pandemic were not asked CVKEYWORK. These respondents are classified as non-key workers when completing analysis by key worker status. Further analysis by key worker status was also completed whereby only working age respondents (aged 16-65) were included in the analysis.