International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 96
International Journal on Criminology
We were therefore able to draw on a set of indicators bearing both on
the victimhood reported by households and on the elements that facilitated the
characterization of households, their occupants, and their living environment detailed
in table 1 and in appendix A4.
Table 1: Summary of the characteristics of households, their accommodation, and their neighborhood.
Characteristics of the
household
Characteristics of the
accommodation
Characteristics of the
neighborhood
Variables
• Educational qualification
of the reference person
• Household income
• Marital status
• Type of household
• Professions and socioprofessional
categories of
the reference person
• Employment status
• Age of the reference
person
• “Legal status”
• Surface area
• Presence of a watchperson
• Number of security
devices
• Presence of a dog
• Type of accommodation
• Centrality
• Size of the urban area
• Type of neighborhood
• Sensitive Urban Zone
(SUZ)
• Knowledge of burglary
Source: “Cadre de Vie et Sécurité” survey, INSEE-ONDRP
Statistical Analysis
With regard to exploratory statistical analysis, taking household characteristics
one by one allows the proportion of households corresponding to the values of each of
the variables to be “measured.” Although this “univariate” approach (a single variable
studied at a time) provides very complete descriptive information, it has two main
limitations.
The first limitation appears when there is a need to treat a large number of
variables or characteristics. The completeness of the univariate analysis loses its
significance in the face of the multiplicity of the results obtained, and the interpretation
of these results loses clarity. In our case, we have available to us seventeen variables for
a total of seventy values. The exploration of all of these variables individually would be
tedious and would ultimately teach us little.
The second limitation is that univariate analysis does not allow for a description
of the relationships that may exist between several characteristics. This task, however,
is of particular interest because it allows associations between various factors to be
established, and thus allows new information to be acquired. These associations can
be determined two by two through bivariate analysis. But once again, the problem of
the number of intersections between all of the characteristics and of the exploitation
of these results in terms of usable information arises.
In order to overcome these limitations and offer an analysis of the characteristics
of households that is both synthetic and informative, here we use multivariate analysis
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