Religiosity and Fear of Crime

Previous research investigating fear of crime has returned little universal agreement as to what exacerbates and what reduces an individual’s level of fear of crime. In this thesis the researcher seeks to add to the mountain of literature on fear of crime and to include a novel independent variable, religiosity, in effort to better inform the fear of crime debate. Analyzing survey data collected from students at an urban university, the researcher finds that (1) females are far more fearful than their male counterparts; (2) religiosity is not informative on varying levels of fear of crime in the sample. An unintended finding was strong instruments to further investigate a possible religiosity/fear of crime relationship that are available to future researchers. The results of this research indicate that fear of crime is a complex phenomenon, and is in need of further research