The general safety module measures the extent to which people worry about their personal safety in their local area and at home and their perceived general feelings of safety in the last 12 months.
The information collected about general feelings of safety includes:
The data items and related output categories for this topic are contained within the SPS Level – General safety tab in the data item list which is available in Excel spreadsheet format from the Downloads tab of this product.
Feelings of safety can influence peoples’ behaviour and their attitude to others in the community in general. The main purpose of these questions is to collect information about a person’s perception of whether they feel safe when:
These questions can also try to assist in determining if the reasons people don’t do these things is due to them feeling unsafe.
Data for this topic has been collected to provide further analytical possibilities around the relationship between feelings of general safety and characteristics of people who experience violence.
Points to be considered when interpreting data for this topic include the following:
COMPARABILITY WITH PREVIOUS SURVEYS
Information about general feelings of safety was collected in the 2005 and 2012 editions of the PSS, as well as the 1996 Women’s Safety Survey and is considered comparable with these surveys.