Safety is not just a critical part of our lives; it is essential for societies to thrive and grow [1, 2]. A glance at the news reveals that safety is a hot topic in today’s world, with mass shootings, racial issues, and international conflicts shaping our sense of security. Additionally, persistent local and national incidents—like terrorist attacks, police brutality, and mass shootings—constantly disrupt our daily sense of safety [3]. The multifaceted nature of perceived unsafety feelings makes it difficult to be accurately measured, as it intersects with various life aspects, including health [4], work [5], and living conditions [6].
Feelings of unsafety, including fear of crime, uncertainty, or insecurity, can negatively impact individuals by reducing psychological well-being [7] and worsening health [8]. These feelings also affect social outcomes, leading to decreased social participation and lifelong learning, as people engage in more precautionary behaviors and avoid going out in the evening [9, 10]. Additionally, feelings of unsafety and fear of crime in one’s neighborhood have been shown to influence mental and physical health, including depressive symptoms [11], intolerance of uncertainty [12], homicidal ideations, suicide attempts [13–15], and physical well-being indices [16]. In addition, a lack of perceived safety can result in lower levels of outdoor physical activity [16], which in turn negatively impacts cardiometabolic health [17], and increases the levels of obesity [18, 19]. As for the academic settings, when students feel unsafe, their academic performance tends to decline [20–22]. These detrimental consequences of feeling of unsafety underscores the necessity of robust measures that enable to comprehensively assess the construct, especially in most vulnerable populations.
Commonly used scales assessing feeling of unsafety
Most previous research has employed a range of instruments to measure unsafety feeling. Some studies have used a single-item measure (e.g., "I feel safe walking alone late at night" or "I generally feel safe"; [21, 23–27]). However, because feeling unsafe can be influenced by a variety of both external (e.g., prevalence of crime, neighborhood walkability) and internal factors (e.g., anxiety, confidence), and since unsafety can manifest in numerous cognitive, emotional, and behavioral manifestations, relying on a single item may not capture the multifaceted nature of this experience and can significantly reduce its external validity [28]. Other studies tend to measure fear of crime rather than perceived feelings of unsafety. These studies ask participants to express their fear and perceived vulnerability concerning various types of crimes [29–31]. While fear of crime is a crucial aspect of unsafety feelings, it is not the only one that matters.
Another commonly used measure in scientific literature to assess feeling of unsafety is neighborhood walkability [32–36]. The most widely established measure of walkability is the Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS; [37]), which assesses participants’ perceptions of their neighborhood design and features related to physical activity, street connectivity, accessibility of walking/cycling, neighborhood aesthetics, neighborhood satisfaction, and traffic/crime safety. An abbreviated version of this measure is also used in the literature [38]. Although these measures include some questions on perceived feeling of unsafety, they do not encompass the complexity of unsafety due to their focus on environmental characteristics and neighborhood perceptions. Since unsafety depends on both the individual perceiver and the environmental conditions, a person might feel safe in some places or generally in their life but perceive their neighborhood as not being walkable [38].
To accurately measure perceived safety, it is essential to consider both subjective factors (such as perceived safety and confidence in one’s safety habits) and more objective factors (such as fear of crime and neighborhood walkability). Therefore, an effective measure of perceived unsafety should collectively focus on all these factors, rather than measuring safety with a single item or any of these factors individually.
Feeling of Unsafety Scale-Arabic (FUSA)
Numerous studies suggest that the feeling of unsafety is multifaceted, encompassing various dimensions such as personal fear versus altruistic fear [39], fear of personal crime versus fear of property crime [40, 41], fear versus trust [42], objective risk versus subjective risk [43], cognitive perception versus affective experience versus behavior, and indoor versus outdoor feeling of unsafety [44].
To better reflect the multifaceted nature of general feeling of unsafety, Elchardus and Smits (2003) [45] developed a brief 8-item self-report questionnaire that measures the construct within the general population. This questionnaire is frequently used in both policy and academic research. It contains items derived from conversations and writings about unsafety; the scale includes items that reference different aspects of time, place, specific situations, as well as feelings, behavior, and cognitive evaluation [46]. Elchardus and Smits (2003, in Dutch [45]) examined the psychometric properties of the scale among adults in two samples from Flanders (Belgium). Confirmatory factor analyses support a one-factor model with good fit measures (sample 1: AGFI = 0.998 / sample 2: AGFI = 0.997) and factor loadings ranging from .50 to .75. Subsequently, an adapted version was developed after removal of two items to be also suitable for use among older adults [46]. For example, the item "Out of fear that I will get mugged, I lock my car door immediately when I get in" was deemed irrelevant as older individuals, particularly the oldest age groups, tend to drive less frequently, leading to a higher likelihood of missing responses. Consequently, Elchardus and colleagues developed an adapted version of the questionnaire, replacing the age-specific questions with two other items [46]. In this context, factor analyses on data from the Belgian Ageing Studies (N = 39,846) provide evidence of good reliability and validity of the Elders Feelings of Unsafety (EFU) scale (EFU) [46]. This adapted 8-item version was chosen to be validated in the Arabic language for two main reasons. The first reason is that we are aiming to provide a measure of feeling of unsafety that can be useful among adults of all ages, including older adults. The second reason is that not all adults in Lebanon or Arab countries drive or own cars.
The present study
Over the past decade, Arab people in general and Lebanese people in particular have endured a series of extremely distressing events, including the 2006 Lebanon War, the COVID-19 pandemic that severely impacted the year 2020, the catastrophic explosion at Beirut's port - one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, and the ongoing economic crisis threatening basic human needs [47]. These events have all been linked directly or indirectly to increased feeling of unsafety [47]. Moreover, these political, social and economic crises have caused major challenges in the Lebanese population, leading to a worrisome increase in different types of crime, violence, and abuse, including physical assault, verbal harassment, psychological trauma, and sexual exploitation [48]. Hence, it has been showed that economic deprivation creates a sense of unsafety and instability, which is likely to increase vulnerability and fear [49]. Additionally, Lebanon's governance is marked by elite dominance, leading to limited opposition and a lenient stance towards organized crime [50]. The economic decline and political turmoil have further impaired the country's ability to effectively tackle organized crime. This overall governance environment has created conditions that are conducive to organized crime, as criminal networks exploit the system's weaknesses [50]. Thus, the country would be an appropriate context to validate the Feeling of Unsafety Scale in Arabic (FUSA). Thus, this study aims to examine the psychometric properties of the FUSA in terms of factor structure, validity, reliability and measurement invariance across sex. We hypothesized that the FUSA would: (1) replicate the original one-factor structure, (2) demonstrate good composite reliability and measurement invariance between sexes (males vs. females), and (3) show appropriate correlations with intolerance of uncertainty.