Ferretti Fabio, Gualtieri Giacomo, Masti Alessandra, Uvelli Allison
Department of Medical Sciences, Surgery and Neurosciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2024 May 6;15:1343585. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1343585. eCollection 2024.
In the last decades, a large body of literature has explored the topic of perceived safety and fear of crime in urban environments. The effects of psychological factors on such feelings have been studied, but rarely using prospective studies, and never when these factors intercept a worldwide dramatic event like the pandemic. This research aimed to analyze the variations of the feelings of urban safety during the pandemic, the role of resiliency and the effect of psychological stressors such as anxiety, stress, and depression.
During 2019 and 2022, before and after the pandemic, a face-to-face interview was administered to the same group of 195 participants. The PUSAS scale was used to measure unsafety, the ER89-R to assess for resiliency, the DASS-21 to collect data about the general distress (anxiety, stress and depression), and the CAS scale was used to evaluate the specific coronavirus anxiety. Structural equation models were applied to test a theoretical framework grounded on the relationships between these measures.
The research findings showed decreased feelings of unsafety across the pandemic, consistent with the literature. The positive effect of ego-resiliency was significant but only for its interaction with data collected before the pandemic, whilst stress and anxiety impacted unsafety in 2022 through different pathways. None of the symptoms of general distress influenced the concern about crime and sense of vulnerability, as the feelings of unsafety were found independent from the variations of the specific coronavirus anxiety.
Although the research findings did not confirm the impact of coronavirus, they presented some facets that disconfirm what the literature reported about the relationships between psychological distress and fear of crime. Implications about measurement issues are discussed.
在过去几十年中，大量文献探讨了城市环境中感知到的安全和对犯罪的恐惧这一主题。心理因素对这些感受的影响已得到研究，但很少采用前瞻性研究，而且在这些因素与像大流行这样的全球性重大事件相互交织时从未进行过研究。本研究旨在分析大流行期间城市安全感的变化、复原力的作用以及焦虑、压力和抑郁等心理压力源的影响。
在2019年至2022年期间，即大流行之前和之后，对同一组195名参与者进行了面对面访谈。使用PUSAS量表测量不安全感，使用ER89-R评估复原力，使用DASS-21收集有关一般痛苦（焦虑、压力和抑郁）的数据，使用CAS量表评估特定的冠状病毒焦虑。应用结构方程模型来检验基于这些测量之间关系的理论框架。
研究结果表明，在整个大流行期间，不安全感有所下降，这与文献一致。自我复原力的积极作用显著，但仅在其与大流行之前收集的数据的相互作用方面，而压力和焦虑在2022年通过不同途径影响不安全感。一般痛苦的症状均未影响对犯罪的担忧和脆弱感，因为发现不安全感与特定冠状病毒焦虑的变化无关。
尽管研究结果未证实冠状病毒的影响，但它们呈现了一些与文献中关于心理困扰与对犯罪的恐惧之间关系的报道相矛盾的方面。讨论了有关测量问题的影响。
