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This study of 664 adults in the Detroit metropolitan area in 1975 provides information on their perceptions of the quality of life in their neighborhood and the services provided by their local governments. Data are provided on neighborhood characteristics and problems, as well as respondents' political beliefs and activities. Items explored respondents' feelings about their neighborhood, city government's services, and a new regional government, and their opinions about government offices and officials, and government's use of taxpayers' money. Also explored were respondents' voting behavior, interactions with people in their neighborhood and in the Detroit tri-county area, and use of the news media. In addition, the respondents were asked to list their neighborhood problems and local issues dealt with that year. Demographic variables specify sex, age, race, education, occupation, and income.

Crime and other matters of criminal justice were the main focus of inquiry for this Detroit Area Study. Respondents were asked to report on incidents of crime against themselves, relatives, and friends. They also were queried about their fears of being victimized by crime and about measures they had undertaken to protect themselves against crime. In addition, the survey elicited views on wide range of criminal justice issues such as the death penalty, the causes of crime and ways to reduce it, the salience of crime as a social problem, the legalization of marijuana use, handgun laws, the criminality of certain acts such as shooting a fleeing burglar, the construction of new prisons, the imposition of new taxes to improve law enforcement, the allocation of federal funds to police and other services, the activities of the police and courts including their fairness toward blacks, and whether or not convicting the innocent was better than letting the guilty go free. The survey also sought respondents' views on other social issues, such as prayer in public schools, labor unions, the Equal Rights amendment, defense spending, abortion, the quality of public schools, and affirmative action. Additional information gathered by the survey includes duration of residence in the tri-county area and at the current address, place of previous residence, moves planned for the future, television viewing habits, which newspapers were read, gun ownership, shopping habits, home and motor vehicle ownership, use of public transportation, travel to work, political and social class affiliation, satisfaction with neighborhoods and with the tri-county area, and information on age, sex, place of birth, marital status, education, employment, occupation, income, religion, race, ethnicity, and household composition.

This study was designed as an exploratory study to understand fear of gang crime among residents living in an urban area plagued by gangs. During the Summer of 1997, six focus groups were conducted in Santa Ana, California -- two in lower income neighborhoods, two in middle income neighborhoods, and two in upper income neighborhoods. After the focus groups ended, participants were asked to take disposable cameras with them and take pictures of examples of neighborhood factors that prompted them to fear gangs and then mail them back to me in a postage-paid envelope.

The research questions guiding this study were: How do the fear-of-crime perspectives apply to fear of gang crime specifically? When worrying about gang crime, do different people focus primarily on different problems (e.g., some diversity or some disorder), or do the same people think about all of these factors? Findings first showed that all four theoretical perspectives on fear of crime applied to the same people at once, rather than to different people (e.g., some being worried about racial and ethnic differences but others about disorder). Second, findings illustrated specifically how these residents connected the factors into one thought process leading to fear of gangs. Residents in these groups clearly believed that ethnic and cultural diversity, or in this case, recent "illegal" Latino immigrants, brought disorder, which in turn caused community decline and brought gangs. This thought process led to personal fear of gang-related victimization. Their beliefs about these causal connections were primarily influenced by their knowledge and observations that gangs in the area were Latino; by direct observation of area diversity disorder, and decline; and by experience living in their changing neighborhoods over time. In addition, beliefs were fueled by indirect victimization, or knowledge gained primarily through acquaintances such as neighbors and community policing officers.