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.
The 2000 SCS was the fifth such survey to be carried out in Scotland. It included an ethnic minority booster sample, which aimed to measure the issues central to the survey series in relation to Scotland's ethnic minority population.
Main Topics:
The information from the SCS is contained within the following files: Coreinfo - common questions from Main A and Main B questionnaires, asked of all respondents, including views on social issues, fear of crime, experience of victimisation since 1st January of the survey year and demographics; MainA - follow-up questions from Main A on contact with the police, views of the police, sentencing and the role of prisons; MainB - follow-up questions from Main B on fear of crime, use of home, personal and vehicle security measures, experience of harassment, violence at work and views of respondent's locality; Victim1 - details from the Victim Forms of incidents of victimisation occurring in Scotland in the relevant survey year (i.e. 1st January-31st December 1999), 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 is used to calculate victimisation and prevalence rates; Victim2 - details from the Victim Forms of incidents of victimisation occurring in Scotland since the beginning of the relevant survey year (i.e. 1st January until the time of interview - around Feb/Mar 2000), covering the same topics as Victim1. This version of the victim form information is used for offence-oriented analysis; Self - data from the Adult Self-Completion Form containing views of respondents aged between 16-59 on knowledge and use of illegal drugs, experience of domestic violence; and, Young - data from the Young Persons Self-Completion Form containing views of respondents aged 12-15 on parental control, leisure time activities, experience of victimisation, contact with and views of the police, self-reported offending, truancy, knowledge of illegal drugs. Core data is obtained from the identical relevant sections of the main questionnaires and after victimisation rates are calculated and the weighting process is complete, this data is added into each of the above files. Therefore all files contain the coreinfo data, although within the Victim1, Victim2 and Young datasets, there may be duplicated lines of coreinfo data relating to a number of questionnaires originating from the same household. In addition to the datasets from the main survey, a further set of datasets exists containing information from ethnic minority (EM) respondents (these datasets have the same names as those from the main sample but each filename is suffixed with an E - e.g. CoreinfoE). This data originates from either the main survey (responses from EM respondents were copied into these datasets) or the EM Booster sample (a separate sample derived from the electoral register). Differences in the origin of cases can be revealed by examining the area and address codes. Standard Measures The study incorporated some Likert scales.
The Ethnic Minority booster was sampled on the basis of examining ethnic-sounding names from the el
Multi-stage stratified random sample
See documentation for further details.
Face-to-face interview
Self-completion
Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) and Computer Assisted Self Interview (CASI) are used fo
