Fear of crime is a phenomenon which affects individuals&#039 / standard of living and influences their everyday behaviors. In this sense, it can be said that if a person has high fear of crime, this will have a negative effect on his or her standard of living. Fear of crime does not always bear resemblance to the crime rate of the society. From this standpoint, residents of a region where crime rate is high do not always have high fear of crime. Similarly, the residents of a region where crime rate is low may have high fear of crime. This situation points out the need of an extensive analysis on fear of crime as a significant variable regarding individuals&#039 / standard of living. This study aims to examine the relationship between perceived risk of victimization and fear of crime. Studies about fear of crime mainly focus on gender differences, social inequalities and physical incivilities. all of this factor are important element to grasp its nature and dimensions of fear of crime. In addition to this factors fear of crime is affected by individuals risk perception of victimization. Our study aims to deal fear of crime concept among students in a multidimensional approach. In this respect, it will evaluate how much the students are afraid of and uncomfortable with being exposed to a crime rather than the assessing merely the possibility of being exposed to a crime. The study will measure the concept of fear of crime over the concept of anticipated fear according to Ferraro&rsquo / s (1995) model. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the measurement of fear of crime the individuals show as a result of contacting other person and environment rather than the instantaneous fears. Our study will evaluate the Metu students&rsquo / fear of crime in terms of specific crimes rather than a general evaluation of crime in line with the approach of risk perception. In this sense, our study seeks to measure the fear of crime over certain crimes such as theft, robbery, simple attack, serious attack and sexual abuse.

Past research has confirmed that structural attributes of nations, as well as individual characteristics of people contribute to levels of fear of crime, across both nations and individuals. Specifically, in regard to the effects structural characteristics have on fear, gender equality has been shown to affect rates of rape, which in turn, affect women's fear of crime. Regarding individual-level determinants, age, income, education, whether one dwells in an urban or rural area, and prior victimization have been shown to have effects on fear. This dissertation set out to answer several research questions related to prior findings: 1) How does gender equality affect women's fear of crime across nations?; 2) Does gender equality have a direct effect on women's fear, or is this effect mediated by national rape rates?; 3) How do structural characteristics other than gender equality affect women's fear of crime?; and last, 4) How do individual characteristics affect women's fear of crime? Using data from various sources, including the International Criminal Victimization Survey, the World Values Survey, the United Nations, and the World Bank (total N=20 nations and 17,384 individuals), I assessed the aforementioned research questions using multilevel modeling. Overall, findings indicate that individual-level characteristics did a better job than structural context in predicting women's fear of crime across various nations. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in the final chapter.

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The research on feeling of safety and fear of crime abroad has been developed since 70s of the 20th century. In the Czech Republic it became of interest at the beginning of 90s after the fall of the communist regime, while the discrepancy between actually committed and formally registered offences resulting in the sharp increase of officially recorded crime manifested itself. In response to this increase there were written first scientific studies, which mainly dealt with the development of feeling of safety and models explaining such feeling in the context of former social problems (economic stress, trust in the government). In our opinion, however, we lack a comprehensive study that discusses the feeling of safety and fear of crime phenomenon from different aspects and intend to verify the validity of the results of international studies in our milieu. Based on the existing theoretical approaches and selected data sources, the study therefore aims to illuminate the structure of the relationship between fear of crime and individual or social factors that correlate with it. The study particularly deals with the relationship between perceived risk of victimization and fear of crime, i.e. concepts that were often used interchangeably at the beginning of research in this area. The analysis has showed...