title: Health, fear of crime and psychosocial functioning in older people.
abstract: Fear of crime is thought to limit social activity in older people. Sixty older people, recruited via day centres, were given questionnaire-based interviews. A series of questions produced two scales of crime awareness and a scale of perceived crime prevalence. Fear of crime was operationalized through a catastrophizing technique, and by a single-item measure of perceived safety. Physical health, mental health and psychosocial limitation were assessed. Physical health was found to moderate a relationship between crime awareness and fear of crime. In multivariate models, fear of crime was not a significant predictor of psychosocial limitation, which was predicted by physical and mental health. Implications of the findings for models of fear of crime and health psychology are discussed.
authors: Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing, UK.
authors: K J
authors: KJ
authors: McKee
authors: C
authors: C
authors: Milner