Fear of crime and its relationship to self-reported health and stress among men

Gloria Macassa; Rocio Winersjö; Katarina Wijk; Cormac McGrath; Nader Ahmadi; Joaquim Soares

doi:10.4081/jphr.2017.1010

Fear of crime and its relationship to self-reported health and stress among men

J Public Health Res. 2018 Jan 2;6(3):1010. doi: 10.4081/jphr.2017.1010. eCollection 2017 Dec 13.

Authors

Gloria Macassa^{1

2}, Rocio Winersjö³, Katarina Wijk⁴, Cormac McGrath⁵, Nader Ahmadi⁶, Joaquim Soares⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Occupational and Public Health Sciences, University of Gävle, Sweden.
² Epidemiology Unit-ISPUP, University of Porto, Portugal.
³ Swedish Board of Health and Social Welfare, Sweden.
⁴ Department of Research, Gävleborg Region, Sweden.
⁵ LIME, Karolinska Institute, Sweden.
⁶ Department of Social Work and Psychology, University of Gävle, Sweden.
⁷ Department of Public Health, Mid-Sweden University, Sweden.

Abstract

Background: Fear of crime is a growing social and public health problem globally, including in developed countries such as Sweden. This study investigated the impact of fear of crime on self-reported health and stress among men living in Gävleborg County.

Design and methods: The study used data collected from 2993 men through a cross sectional survey in the 2014 Health in Equal Terms survey. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were carried out to study the relationship between fear of crime and self-reported health and stress.

Results: There was a statistically significant association between fear of crime and self-reported poor health and stress among men residing in Gävleborg County. In the bivariate analysis, men who reported fear of crime had odds of 1.98 (CI 1.47-2.66) and 2.23 (CI 1.45-3.41) respectively. Adjusting for demographic, social and economic variables in the multivariate analysis only reduced the odds ratio for self-reported poor health to 1.52 (CI 1.05-2.21) but not for self-reported stress with odds of 2.22 (1.27-3.86).

Conclusions: Fear of crime among men was statistically significantly associated with self-reported poor health and stress in Gävleborg County. However, the statistically significant relationship remained even after accounting for demographic, social and economic factors, which warrants further research to better understand the role played by other variables.

Keywords: Fear of crime; Gävleborg County; men; self-reported health and stress.

Grants and funding

Funding: This study was funded by the University of Gävle through research grants allocated to the Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies Grant 2016.