EUROSTAT
Directorate F: Social and Information Society Statistics; Crime /
Version 06.08.2010
Draft Minutes
task force on victimisation
luxembourg, 21-22june 2010
JMO, room M4
1
1 Introduction and adoption of agenda (Doc. CR/TF2010/1)
This was the second meeting of this task force within the last two months, having been organised at short notice in order to further developmethodological details of the survey on victimization, in particular the questionnaire, precision requirements for the main results, and fieldwork recommendations.The results of the TF work would be presented at the meeting of Directors of Social Statistics (DSS) in September 2010.
Nineteen EU Member States and Norway participated, together with representatives of the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the Commission's Directorate-General for Justice Freedom and Security (DG JLS) and the team of consultants from TilburgUniversity.
The draft agenda was presented by the chairman Anne Clemenceau. The point on main indicators to be produced from the survey was postponed to be discussed after the presentation of summary results on the consultation questionnaire. Otherwise the agenda was adopted in its proposed form.
2. The preparatory questionnaire results (Doc. CR/TF2/2010/7)
The consultation on countries plans on implementation of the safety/security/victimisation survey took place during May and June 2010. Twenty six members of the Working Group on Victimisation replied to the consultation questionnaire.
The results of the consultation were encouraging. Twenty three countries had the intention of conducting the survey and five of them has planned it already.
Some countries corrected details of the implementation planes summarized in the Eurostat presentation. UKinformed that the reply sent to Eurostat should be interpreted rather as no than yes. Indeed there is national well established victimization survey. It does however differ from the EU model. The budgetary constrains may not allow for a new survey or adjustments of the national one to full fill the EU needs.
The Netherlandswould investigate the possibility of using national survey for the EU purposes. In principle, using national results complemented by some extra questions seemed feasible.
Statistics Finlandwas currently facing financial problems and it was not certain whether the national contribution of 10% of costs of the survey would be achievable.
In Franceit was still unclear whether a new survey or a national one may be used for to EU needs. Franceexpressed also strong concerns on the quality of results as for the sexual offences and violence committed by aperson living in the respondent household as the answer depended largely on the mode of data collection.
Financial concerns were mentioned by more countries facing currently budget cuts. EU support for the future rounds of the surveys was not certain, and the future of the survey itself was not defined in the Regulation.
Countries who expressed concern about provisional and approximate character of the planning and costs calculations reported in the consultation questionnaire were assured that the consultation was purely informative and it's not binding for future applications for grants.
Eurostat clarified the question on financing of national survey in countries where it exists. Only relevant survey adjustments, derivations performed for the EU needs could be financed by the Commission and not the whole survey itself.
Accroding to Eurostat rules, the general grant policy rules would be applicable for the financing of the survey and only eligible costs could be financed. Details of the types of costs concerned and the rules for grant applications would be provided to the TF members.
3. Indicators to be produced (Doc. CR/TF2/2010/2)
The Expert Group on Policy Needs of Data on Crime and Criminal Justice, during their January meeting requested an active involvement in the development of the European Security Survey. Responding to this request, Eurostat, at the last meeting of the working group on crime statistics (February 2010), asked the Expert Group to provide key indicators which will be calculated based on the collected data in 2013. The issue was first discussed at the meeting of the sub-group on planning, March 16, where it was decided to draft and circulate to the members of the Expert Group a list of possible indicators asking them to express their priorities based on the needs and characteristics of their MemberState. Prof. Jan Van Dijk, who is a member of the Expert Group,kindly, offered his help in the drafting of this list which was sent out in April 2010.
The first results were presented at the meeting of the Task Force on victimisation, 29 April 2010, where it was decided to extend the deadline of the exercise so as to receive as many replies as possible. Despite the reminders, none of the remaining Member States responded. Problems with the list of national experts appeared to be a chief reason for this. Some persons on the original list had changed jobs without notifying DG JLS of their successors.
The participants generally endorsed the value of this exercise. Professor van Dijk indicated that a number of adjustments to the questionnaire on the basis of the consultation, such as deletion of vandalism, the screener on threats, and identity theft.
There was some discussion of the appropriateness of covering violence against women, especially in the light of the imminent survey being conducted by the Fundamental Rights Agency. It was agreed to return to this issue under point 5.
4. Precision requirements (Doc. CR/TF2/2010/3)
In principle the TF agreed with the general proposal of sample size of 8000 individuals per country with the exceptions of 6000 and 5000 for smaller countries defined on the basis of the size of population aged 16 and more.
A mistake was noted in the calculations in the table with confidence interval for indicators on prevalence rates for first scenario.
The proposal to define precision requirements for indicators of prevalence rate for three subpopulations(16-24), (25-59), (60+) did not receive general agreement. It was pointed out that the division into the groups of young, economically active and retired persons seemed not to be relevant for the survey topic.
There was particular concern related to the quality of indicators on prevalence rate for the subgroup of young people (aged 16-24), and the difficulties connected with oversampling of this group. For many countries the sampling scheme did not allow for knowing the age of the respondent in advance so the oversampling in the group of young would mean increasing the total sample size. Moreover, even countries dealing with the samples pre-stratified by age found oversampling this group very costly as young people form the group with the highest non-response rates.
Some countries expressed the opinion that no details on the precision requirements were needed at this stage. Eurostat pointed out that the Council and Parliament Regulationwould define the level of the Commission financial contribution, so that the financial implications of the survey needed to be indicated in the text.
Finally it was agreed that the formulation of the requirement to be included in the Regulation should be in terms of the sample size in terms of individuals rather then confidence intervals, as the latter could be problematic for the political debate.
A new proposal for the precision requirements, taking into account the views expressed by the participants,would be prepared by Eurostat for consultation of the Task Force immediately after the meeting.
5. Proposals for further development of the questionnaire (Doc. CR/TF2/2010/4)
There had been a lengthy discussion of this point at the previous meeting, and subsequently written comments had also been received from a number of participants. Based upon this input, a number of modifications were now proposed by the consultants.
Section A. Feeling safe and worried about crime.
This section was now very short. The 'safety after dark' question had been reintroduced.
There was some discussion of the utility of having both questions A3 and A4. It was agreed to revise the order of the questions, placing worries about contact crime before worries about terrorism and the likelihood of burglary.
Section B Use of vehicles and second home ownership
This section had been added to improve coverage of crimes involving vehicles and second homes.
Some participants felt that the screener on second homes was misplaced, and others raised further issues such as whether to be included if rented out full-time. A number of further points were identified as needing clarification in the documentation.
Section C Victimisation screeners
Following the previous meeting, this section had been modified in particular to improve the issue of crimes of violence.
Italyopposed the proposed approach to the coverage of violence and gave a presentation of an alternative method. Some participants felt that this gave too much attention to the topic of partner violence, especially as this would be covered by the FRA survey on violence against women and there was a risk of producing different results. There was some uncertainty as to exactly what the proposal entailed.
Eurostat therefore proposed a written consultation of the task force in which three options would be put forward :
- The current questionnaire
- Elimination of sexual violence from the questionnaire
- An alternative version to be developed by Italy
Section D Victimisation details
The modifications proposed in this module concerned a question on the seriousness of the crime (previously dropped but now reinserted), possible insurance claims and possible motives for hate crimes such as ethnicity.
A number of participants felt that other motives than ethnic or immigrant status should be covered so the following were added: religion or belief, disability, sexual orientation.
Latvia proposed that the influence of drugs on the offender should be added to that of alcohol. After discussion of the alternatives it was decided to include the following response categories: drugs, alcohol, could not distinguish, both, neither.
There was some discussion of experiences of victim support services; it was pointed out that these did not exist in all countries. Consequently it was agreed to add a response category for cases where the victim was not aware of the existence of such a service.
It was agreed to determine the reference period by asking if the event occurred in the last 12 months, as this was simpler than asking the actual year/month.
Section E Attitudes to law enforcement and security precautions
In this section it was proposed to delete specific details about the type of gun possessed and the question frequency of going out, and to add instead a question on avoidance behaviour.
There was some discussion of the question on contact with drugs issues but finally this was not changed.
Finalnd welcomed the changes in questions E6 and E7 to improve comparability with the 'Justis' project and also proposed a change in the phraseology of the punitiveness question E8 so as to clarify the issue of breaking into a home.
Section F Additional personal and household information
It was generally felt that this section should be placed at the beginning of the questionnaire. This would be for each country to decide.
6. Fieldwork issues (Doc. CR/TF2/2010/5)
A number of modifications had been made to this document since the previous meeting of 29-30 April. These were briefly reviewed by Pat Mayhew.
There was some discussion of the effect of alternative interview modes. The Netherlands pointed out that different prevalence rates were obtained at the various stages of their sequential system of interviewing (letter-CAWI-postal).
There was also further discussion of the proposed name of the survey. There was general agreement to include the word 'safety' (rather than 'crime' or 'victimisation' but the acronym EUSS should be avoided. Italy proposed to include the word 'citizens' but this was opposed by Latvia.
7. Draft Council and European Parliament Regulation (Doc. CR/TF2/2010/6)
A revised version of the text was presented by Eurostat. The following changes had been introduced compared with the version discussed at the 29-30 April meeting :
- Article 5 – Revised proposal on precision requirements in line with the discussions summarised above for point 4. Some countries had also raised the issue of reliability at regional level but this would not be included in the Regulation.
- Article 7 – Results should be sent as micro-data by 31 October 2014, but provisional results should be sent by 30 June in order to satisfy DG JLS requirements for data availability.
The discussion concentrated on the former point. A number of issues discussed under point 4 were revisited, including the general need for specifying the number of households in this regulation. Some participants felt that the age-group specifications should instead be in the Commission regulation.
Concerning the provision of data in tabular form, several countries expressed doubt that this would be possible within the proposed timeframe, and especially as the micro-data would need in any case to be available before the tables could be prepared.
The possible use of proxies was debated. Some countries wished to allow this possibility, but the general feeling was that this would entail an unacceptable reduction of data quality.
The issue of financing was also raised, and several questions were asked concerning the timing of the grants and the procedure to be used. Several Member States expressed disquiet that there was no reference to further financing after the initial survey in 2013.
8. Conclusions
- Eurostat would provide all Task Force members as soon as possible with the revised questionnaire following the discussions at this meeting, together with the alternative proposal of Italy concerning coverage of violence, and the revised precision requirements. Comments from all would be requested (Note : this consultation was initiated by email from Agnieszka Litwinska 2/7/2010).
- Eurostat would consolidate the responses to this consultation in the form of a revised proposal. This would be circulated to the Working Group on Crime and Criminal Justice for further comments, together with a draft of the document to be presented to the Directors of Social Statistics.(Note : this consultation was initiated by email from Agnieszka Litwinska 28/7/2010).
- Eurostat would seek agreement of the DSS on 23-24 September for conducting the survey in 2013. Further steps would be decided at that meeting.
- Draft minutes would be placed on CIRCA and participants were requested to propose any changes so that they could be finalised as soon as possible.
9. Other business
Athina Karvounaraki (DG JLS) announced that the provisional DG JLS budget for 2011 would include funding for testing the survey.Assuming that this was accepted, the funds would be sub-delegated to Eurostat and made available in the form of grants.
1