To Örebro University

The current study examines the relative importance of fear of crime and its three aspects—affective, behavioral, and cognitive—in relation to frailty (daily activities, health problems, psychosocial functioning), news consumption, trust in neighborhood, and perceptions of rising crime among older adults in a mid-sized Swedish municipality. Using logistic regression, we analyzed data from a subsample of 336 participants from a Swedish cross-sectional study of adults aged 65 and older (mean age = 76.62; age range = 64 to 106 years). Contrary to the common portrayal of older adults as highly fearful of crime, our findings reveal that their primary worries are more closely linked to health problems, social isola-tion, and other personal vulnerabilities than to fear of crime. Trust in the neighborhood is associated with lower levels of the affective and behavioral aspects of fear of crime. Conversely, perceptions of rising crime are positively related to the affective and behavioral aspects of fear. Health problems and problems in psychosocial functioning are positively linked to the affective aspect. Further, problems in psychosocial functioning are positively related to the behavioral aspect. Overall, while crime is a worry, it is overshadowed by more immediate health and social issues.

Childhood aggression and peer victimization are associated not only with each other but also with future delinquency. However, existing literature focuses almost entirely on aggression and peer victimization in middle childhood or adolescence, making it unclear whether such associations can be found in early childhood. The current study aimed to identify latent profiles of children based on early childhood aggression and peer victimization, and to examine whether profiles were associated with delinquent outcomes (theft, violence, and vandalism) in adolescence. We used longitudinal data from 2,113 participants (53.4% boys) between the ages of 3 and 5 years at baseline (M = 3.86, SD = 0.85). We applied a three-step latent profile analysis on teacher and parent measures of aggression and peer victimization and used self-reports about delinquent behaviors from ages 14 to 16 years as outcome measures. We accounted for potential clustering effects of preschool classes and adjusted analyses for age, sex, and socio-economic status. We identified four profiles of children: non-involved (68.7%), victims (16.3%), aggressors (13.7%), and aggressive victims (1.3%), but found no significant associations between latent profiles and delinquency. As nearly one-third of participants were identified as early childhood victims, aggressors, or aggressive victims, we highlighted the importance of addressing early childhood aggression and peer victimization since the risk for negative development (i.e. later criminality or social adjustment issues) has been shown in prior research.