Conducting Online Crime and Safety Surveys with British Farmers

• Author: Kreseda Smith
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10575677211042262
• Subject Matter: Articles

Conducting Online Crime

and Safety Surveys with

British Farmers

Kreseda Smith

Abstract

Rural crime continues to be an under-represented area of academia. As a result, much of the meth-

odological guidance tends to stem from health or rural development research, providing general

guidance, but lacking the specif‌ic considerations of conducting crime and safety research in a

rural environment. However, the impact of COVID-19 has led to a wider consideration of online

surveys, particularly in rural communities. This paper provides guidance on conducting online

crime and safety surveys with the farming community based on the extensive experience of the

author in the f‌ield of rural criminology. Methodological considerations will be addressed that distin-

guish rural online crime and safety surveying from its urban counterpart, and the advantages and

disadvantages of this methodology will be discussed. The aim being to guide the rural criminological

researcher in the use of online surveys to obtain key data from the farming community to support

and extend their research.

Keywords

rural, surveys, research methods, criminology

Introduction

Online surveys are structured questionnaires that are set up, disseminated, and completed by par-

ticipants over the Internet (OnlineSurveys, n.d.) and provide a simple, low cost, uncomplicated

(although increasingly sophisticated) method of gathering primary survey data from a population

without having to use telephone, postal, or face-to-face methods. Online surveys have been used

for at least the last two decades as a data collection methodology for researchers across a range of

subject areas, including education (Roberts & Allen, 2015), marketing (Ilieva et al., 2002), and

health research (Geldsetzer, 2020). However, rural online surveys, those online surveys focusing spe-

cif‌ically on issues affecting rural areas and rural communities, often tend to be limited to research in

rural health (Chen et al., 2019; Curran et al., 2006) and rural development (Pašakarnis et al., 2013;

Perez y Perez & Egea, 2019), particularly in the developing world (Ahmad et al., 2019; Warugaba

et al., 2016). There are few examples of the use of rural online surveys in academic research with

Rural Security Research Group, Harper Adams University, Newport, UK

Corresponding Author:

Kreseda Smith, Rural Security Research Group, Harper Adams University, Newport, UK.

Email: kresedasmith@harper-adams.ac.uk

Article

International Criminal Justice Review

2021, Vol. 31(4) 369-383

© 2021 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/10575677211042262

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