WP4 Attitudinal Indicators

start date month 14 – closing date month 24

WP LEADER: UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

WP4 will develop survey-based level 1 and level 2 indicators of public confidence in criminal justice, as defined in Section 1.1, in line with the specification produced by WP3. The primary indicators (level 1) will be a small number of lead indicators which cover the most important elements of confidence and insecurity. The secondary indicators (level 2) support the primary indicators and go into more detail on the various dimensions of the issue. Both level 1 and level 2 indicators will be survey-based. It is expected that indicators will cover the following:

a) agency-specific measures of confidence in the criminal justice system (e.g. policing, courts, prisons, sentencing);

b) fear of crime (the extent to which citizens express concern or worry about victimisation of themselves or their family members);

c) contact with the criminal justice system (such as encounters with police officers; magistrates; prison officers and probation officers).

These indicators will take the form of a number of survey questions for use at both national and supranational level in social scientific surveys and which can be employed as indicators of public confidence in the criminal justice system – and, as such, used to assess policies. Such assessments could be made of specific policies aimed at tackling specific issues (e.g. increased police foot patrols by police officers) or could be used to assess the wider style and tenor of a member state’s overall criminal justice policies, or EU-wide directives.

The following tasks will be implemented in WP4:

Task 4.1: Question design and development

This task will translate the concepts developed in WP3 into specific survey questions. These questions, which “operationalise” the theoretical foundations of the EURO-JUSTIS project, will allow for the construction of scales. Questions will be developed and tested using the technique of ’cognitive interviewing’, in which interviewees will be asked about their understanding of the question, and asked to describe their thought processes as they answer to the survey question.

Task 4.2: Batteries of Questions to be Employed as Scientific Survey-Based Indicators of Public Confidence in Justice for Policy Assessment

This task will assemble viable survey questions these into sets – or batteries – of questions designed to be imported into national or supra-national surveys. We envisage producing options ranging from the very limited to the exhaustive, that can be used either in face-to-face or phone surveys.

Task 4.3: Conceptual and literal translation of survey questions

This task will translate the batteries of questions developed in Task 4.2. into the EU languages of the partner institutions, the population to be surveyed and other major languages for dissemination purposes. Care will be needed to ensure that the items retain conceptual equivalence across languages.

<< back