Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey (SVTS) began in 2020. It is a social survey which asked people about their experiences and perceptions of crime, safety, and policing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SVTS was developed as a result of all Scottish Government face-to-face interviewing, including the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS), being suspended to support social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The suspension of the SCJS opened up an evidence gap with particular challenges for assessing the volume of crime in Scotland not reported to the police, where other sources cannot provide an alternative. The Scottish Government introduced the SVTS as a discrete and additional collection to the SCJS. As such it should not be viewed as a replacement to the latter, with Scottish Government statisticians keeping under review options for the resumption of the SCJS including an assessment of the continued impact of social distancing measures on the running of face-to-face social surveys in Scotland.Further information may be found in the documentation and on the Scottish Government Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey webpage.
The main aims of the SVTS 2020 were to: collect data whilst face-to-face interviewing on the SCJS was not possible enable respondents to tell us about their experiences and perceptions of crime, safety, and policing; including crime not reported to the police provide a reliable measure of adults' experience of crime examine the varying risk and characteristics of crime for different groups of adults in the population examine any changes in crime between the pre-COVID-19 period (September 2019 to the 23rd March 2020 when the UK’s first national lockdown was introduced) and the period following this up to the end of September 2020 provide a complementary measure of crime to compare with police recorded crime statistics for the same period provide information on public perceptions of crime, policing and safety issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including comparisons with data collected in England and Wales as part of the Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales (TCSEW) The results are based on a sample of around 2,700 telephone interviews conducted in September and October 2020. The survey is designed to be nationally representative of all private residential households in Scotland.
Main Topics:
Experience of crime victimisation, perceptions of crime, feelings of safety, worry about crime, security consciousness, perceptions of the police and demographics (including, work, health and key-worker status).The questionnaire for the SVTS was shorter than the SCJS, and whilst the great majority of those questions which collect information to allow the accurate measurement of adults' experience of crime were retained, there are otherwise few questions which are the same on the SCJS and the SVTS. Data from the Victim Form are available under SN 8798, which is subject to restrictive Special Licence Access conditions.
Purposive selection/case studies
Telephone interview: Computer-assisted (CATI)
