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The Australian component of the 2004 International Crime Victimisation Survey

Graham Challice and Holly Johnson
ISBN 0 642 53889 1 ; ISSN 1445-7261
Australian Institute of Criminology, 2005
(Technical and background paper series, no. 16)

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Questionnaire

Victimisation survey data provide an important complement to official statistical data produced by police and other criminal justice agencies. A major advantage of the ICVS is that it combines a range of detailed questions about experiences with crime, perceptions of crime and actions taken in response to victimisation. These data have many practical uses, including monitoring change in victimisation rates over time, understanding risk, understanding victims' decisions to report to police, examining fear of crime and developing crime prevention strategies. The Australian Bureau of Statistics also conducts a national crime victimisation survey, the Crime and Safety Survey, on a regular basis, most recently in 2002 (ABS 2002). Advantages of the ICVS are that it is broader in scope and each cycle can be adapted to focus on specific policy issues that have been identified by stakeholders.

The 2004 ICVS asked respondents about their experiences of selected types of crimes in the preceding five years (back to 1999). From this, five-and one-year rates for 2003 can be calculated. The standard international questionnaire contains four personal and seven household crimes.

Personal crimes:

  • assaults and threats;
  • sexual assault (rape, attempted rape, indecent assault) and offensive sexual behaviour;
  • robbery (theft of personal property with violence or the threat of violence); and
  • personal theft (theft of personal property without violence).

Household crimes:

  • burglary;
  • attempted burglary;
  • motor vehicle theft (cars, vans or trucks);
  • theft from motor vehicles;
  • damage to motor vehicles;
  • motorcycle theft (including scooters and mopeds); and
  • bicycle theft.

With the 2004 Australian survey, the standard ICVS questionnaire was modified to incorporate additions requested by the Australian Government departments that funded the research. These additions included:

  • a module on fraud and cybercrime;
  • questions on licensing and safe storage of firearms (to supplement existing questions concerning firearm ownership);
  • experience with racially motivated assaults/threats and fear of racially motivated violence;
  • demographic questions, including place of birth, parents' place of birth, year of arrival in Australia to live, language(s) other than English spoken at home, religion, Indigenous status; and
  • feelings of safety while using or waiting for public transportation.

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) made the decision to drop the section of the questionnaire dealing with damage to motor vehicles. In addition, the following items were dropped from the Australian component:

  • corruption by government or public officials;
  • consumer fraud (replaced by fraud and cyber crime); and
  • sexual assault and offensive sexual behaviour.

While the omission of sexual assault may appear to jeopardise the comparability of estimates with previous cycles of the ICVS and with other countries, almost all women who reported a sexual assault in the 2000 survey also reported an assault. Thus, the total rate of violent victimisation will likely be affected by no more than one percentage point. It was felt that more reliable estimates of sexual assault are available from the International Violence Against Women Survey (completed by the AIC in 2003; see Mouzos & Makkai 2004) and results from the upcoming Personal Safety Survey (underway in 2005 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics).

The full Australian questionnaire is included in Appendix A.