Conversely Mixed Mode in the Swedish Crime Survey Sanna Wallin, researcher The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention Thank you! It’s very nice to be here. My name is Sanna Wallin and I’m here to talk about Conversely Mixed Mode in the Swedish Crime Survey. I’m a researcher at the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention which is a public agency under the Ministry of Justice and a knowledge centre for the justice system. The council contribute to knowledge in the area of criminal policy and promote crime prevention efforts. We do this by working up and producing official crime statistics and other statistics on instruction from the Government. conducting applied research as instructed by the Government, in cooperation with justice system agencies, and on our own initiative.

The Swedish Crime Survey Annual survey by telephone interviews confidence in the justice system exposure to crime (victimization) fear of crime victims’ contacts with the justice system Conducted since 2006 A stratified random sample of 20,000 Swedish residents aged 16–79 First of all, what is the Swedish Crime Survey? It’s a annual survey of the general public in Sweden about confidence in the justice system, exposure to and fear of crime and also victims’ contacts with the justice system. The survey has been conducted since 2006 by a stratified random sample of 20 000 Swedish residents aged 16-79.

The Swedish population register Everyone who lives in Sweden is registered The population register contains information about : Name Spouse, children, parents, legal guardians and adoption Address Personal identity number Moves to and from Sweden Place of birth Addresses abroad Citizenship Death and burial site How do we get information about the residents in Sweden? The Swedish Tax Agency are responsible of the population registration in Sweden. In the process, details of those who are living in Sweden, and where, are recorded. Everyone who is registered is issued with a unique personal identity number (almost like social security number), which is used in contacts with government agencies and others. The survey population consists of everyone in the register aged 16-79 . In the Swedish Crime Survey we use name, address and personal identity number to be able to link data in other registers (like education, income and more).

The Swedish Crime Survey Information about the survey to residents home address Search for telephone numbers Screening and follow-up by telephone interviews Postal questionnaire to non-respondents Response rate lowered from 78 % in 2006 to 60 % in 2016 Everyone gets a letter with an invitation to and information about the survey. The interviewers search registers for phone numbers. The telephone interviews, conducted from January through April, starts with screening questions and for those victimized there are follow-up questions as well. Those who don’t answer by telephone (due to no contact) are sent a short postal questionnaire with screening questions. In the latest survey, conducted earlier this year, the response rate was 60 percent and 7 % participated through postal or web questionnaires. In the first survey, back in 2006, the response rate was 78 percent.

Non-response Here’s a graph illustrating the non-response from 2006 to 2016. As you can se, the overall non-response has gone from 22 % in 2006 to 39 % in 2016. The inability to answer is at the same level in 2016 as in 2006, about 3 %. There is an increase in the share of refusal to answer, from almost 12 to almost 16 percent. But the biggest difference in non-response is in the category no contact, from 8 to almost 21 percent. We think that this probably is due to new ways of communicating, fewer people have fixed telephony (landline) at home. In Sweden, only 51 % use fixed telephony, meanwhile 97 % use mobile phones and 94 % have internet at home. Also there is an reluctance to answer when number is not recognized (the caller is unknown). The interviewers spend more time searching for phone numbers (very expensive) than actual interviewing. It’s harder to find number for mobile phones. Compared to other surveys in Sweden who use postal questionnaires as single data collection method, the response rate is lower but almost constant over time.

Need for methodology change Fast increase in non-response rate Increasing costs Smaller geographical areas Both due the increasing non-response and the increasing costs there’s a need for methodology change to maintain high data quality in the Swedish Crime Survey. Also, there is a whish for results on smaller geographical areas than today which demands a larger sample.

New method – conversely mixed mode Screening by postal- or web questionnaire Follow-up of sample of victimized by telephone interviews Experiment with mixed-mode So, the new method consists of screening with web/postal questionnaire. To change method from telephone interviews to web/postal questionnaire you need to adapt the questions. A sample of victimized respondents are followed-up by telephone interviews. We are now working on a design for that. Last fall, Statistics Sweden (which is a government agency that produces statistics) made an experiment with mixed-mode within Swedish Crime Survey. Though the questions weren’t adapted to the new method the experiment gave the same estimated percentage of victims as the Swedish Crime Survey.

Split-half Split-half (screening) in 2017 parallel to Swedish Crime Survey Larger sample 200 000 residents in 95 local police districts Effects of method change The mixed-mode makes it possible (due to lower costs for data collection) to increase the sample size, from 20 000 to 200 000, in order to show results for every local police districts in Sweden. Overall, the new method makes the Swedish Crime Survey more cost-efficient and more flexible. The follow-up interviews can be conducted on a specific sample of the respondents (for example the youngest) or specific questions can be included (for example partner violence). The screening-part of the new method will be tested in a split-half in 2017 parallel to the Swedish Crime Survey. And the effects of the changes in method, the questions and the sample will be evaluated next year.

More… www.bra.se sanna.wallin@bra.se search for “Swedish Crime Survey” Do you want to know more about the Swedish Crime Survey, or about the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, visit our website. Please do not hesitate to email me if you have questions about the presentation. THANK YOU for your attention!!