Crime prevention and community safety surveys
Keep your community safe with information from online crime surveys
Build a safe and strong community by using surveys to identify neighborhood concerns or trouble spots.
What’s your neighborhood’s crime time? Do parents feel comfortable letting their children bike around? Are public recreation areas clean, well-lit, and safe to visit any time of the day? Do the elderly, homebound, and after-schoolers know what public safety resources they can call if they need help? Crime and community safety questionnaires can help you understand your residents’ concerns and needs, as well as decide what programs might benefit your community the most.
Find out what your neighborhood’s top crime time concerns are. Create surveys, track responses and analyze results with our powerful tools—the SurveyMonkey alternative makes it easy.
How to use community safety and crime prevention surveys
Whether you’re part of a public safety organization or neighborhood group, or simply a concerned individual, you can marshal the power of the people to make your community a safer place for all.
- Assess neighborhood safety. Find out which are the trouble spots in your neighborhood and get suggestions on how to fix them. At the same time, survey residents to be sure they know where they can go or who they can call for help.
- Explore public safety and crime prevention solutions. Sometimes you have to look outside your community for answers. Use surveys in combination with SurveyMonkey Audience to explore what similar communities and organizations are doing to prevent crime and improve public safety.
- Mobilize community safety volunteers. From disaster preparedness to neighborhood watch and first responder services, volunteers build stronger communities. Use surveys to assess interest and availability and to help build greater community by involving members in planning and delivering safety programs. Organize your church, temple, mosque or even your yoga studio to improve neighborhood safety with a community survey that helps you mobilize your volunteer assets.
- Survey all of your citizens, including the less mobile or non-Internet users. Use SurveyMonkey to create automated phone surveys. With telephone surveys, a recorded voice poses questions to respondents, who reply using their phone keypads. Combine a friendly voice and any one of our survey templates with automated phone surveying, and you’ve got a powerful, accessible way to engage all of your community and help them stay in touch during peak crime times.
Sample survey templates
Use surveys as a tool for preventing crime and ensuring public safety. Start with our expert-certified survey templates, or create your own. Professional survey methodologists write all of our templates and example questions, so you can use them as is. You can also customize templates to fit your needs, or create your own using the certified questions available in our Question Bank.
Here are a few expert-designed templates that can help you ensure the safety and health of your community. Please note that some survey templates are only available in English at this time.
- Neighborhood Safety and Participation. Our 19-question Neighborhood Survey asks about residents’ sense of community, crime time awareness, and level of participation, the cleanliness and safety of parks and other public areas, and their perception of the future of the neighborhood.
- School Safety. Explore safety in the school environment with one of our methodologist-certified educational survey templates or a Harris School Pulse survey. Use surveys such as Bullying, Child Email Use and Safety, Child Internet Use and Safety, and Child Facebook Use and Safety to assess child-safety consciousness.
- Community Events and Fundraising. Our collection of nonprofit survey templates can help you gain valuable insights to use in planning, developing, and delivering community crime prevention and safety programs. Use these templates to plan events, gather donor feedback, and recruit and place volunteers.
- Communications. Assess the best channels for reaching the residents of your community. Use our 9-question language proficiency template to determine which languages to use, as well as our mobile or social media usage templates to broaden your reach and accessibility.
3 quick tips to improve survey response rates
- Keep it positive and solutions-oriented. Explain the purpose of your survey in a brief introduction. Tell your respondents how you’ll use the information. For example: “This survey is meant to help identify public safety improvements for our community. Your feedback will help us decide what we should focus on first.”
- Make your survey as accessible as possible. We build stronger communities by including as many people as possible. All of our standard survey designs comply with web accessibility standards (by U.S. Section 508 standards).
- Be brief. Shorter surveys are easier for respondents to complete. Be sure to indicate how long yours will take.
Discover more resources
Toolkits directory
Discover our toolkits, designed to help you leverage feedback in your role or industry.
Boost survey response rates with these 20 email templates
Enhance your survey response rates with 20 free email templates. Engage your audience and gather valuable insights with these customizable options!
P-value calculator: How to calculate p-value
Leverage our p-value calculator to find your p-value. Plus, learn how to calculate p-value and how to interpret p-values with our step-by-step guide.
In beta: Invite anyone to collaborate on surveys with managed, open reviews
Invite survey collaborators, with or without a SurveyMonkey account, to review surveys for better collaboration.